How do I manually “shut down” an hard drive without plugging it out?

Question

I am connecting 1-2 hard drives via E-SATA. Using Windows, is there an option to force "shutting down" that hard drive (until it is needed again)?

Answer 1

What you're looking for is to 'spin down' a drive. Here is a similar question.

If you want to disable drives with the command line, you can use DevCon:

devcon disable <hardware id>

Using the divice manager:

Right click on disk > disable

Answer 2

Under the power settings you can set the turn off harddisk time.
This is for all harddrives connected to the PC.
If one harddrive is inactive for the selected period of time it will be deactivated
and reactivated when needed.

Answer 3

You can't do it with Windows directly - the only option you have is through power options but typically this turns off all hard drives at once - there is some specialist power option software (I won't link as links become outdated, just use a search engine).

Or, as you're using e-sata I assume this is external - you could get external sata boxes with power buttons but as per my comments I think the powering up and down would cause more damage than leaving a disc idle.

FYI typically even by disabling the disc in Device Manager does not stop it from using power nor from spinning. If it has power, it is on!