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I've seen this question asked many times, even here, but that was 10 years ago.

  • Primary drive: Samsung SSD
  • Secondary drive: Seagate Barracuda

I'm on Linux Mint now but when I had Windows 10 installed it was spinning up my empty secondary hard drive (NTFS) for no reason. I've searched answers and it all comes down to indexing, power plan and similar. Nothing helped, I believe it's hard coded into Windows and user can't turn it off.

Also, when it's inactive and I enter the HDD I can hear it spin up, probably because it's activating it. But what's strange to me is that Linux doesn't do this. I can't hear the drive at all wheater I'm using it or not, creating folders or not, it's silent and it works. Note: It's a new Seagate Barracuda 1TB. One more thing, once windows is done and I'll call it "scanning/collecting metadata" from my HDD it slows down and stops spinning I guess as I can hear it like higher pitched screech/scratch sound when it stops.

That's the best I could describe it since as I said, this is not happening on Linux Mint, no spinning, sounds etc...

As I'm on Linux (secondary HDD is ext4 now) I'm not really trying to fix anything but I'm rather interested in what on Earth is Windows doing with my secondary HDD. This has happened in the past with different drives, although I can't rebember if the HDD had scratch-like-high-pitch sound when it stops.

I'm not an expert but my thought process is that Linux might manage power and access to drives differently than Windows and since I can use Catfish program on Linux on my secondary HDD without even hearing it spin so I doubt that it's HDD failure.

Does anybody have any opinion on this? Will Windows's behaviour reduce the lifespan of HDD if I use it?

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  • "As I'm on Linux (secondary HDD is ext4 now)" so in Windows it's not even assigned a drive letter I assume? May 24, 2023 at 14:08
  • Windows periodically checks the status of disk drives and may wake them up in the process. Presumably Linux doesn't do it.
    – harrymc
    May 24, 2023 at 14:20
  • Joep, it was assigned letter "D", fully functional. @harrymc oh well I guess there's no turning off that behaviour if it's a part of Windows anatomy.
    – gamingmsi
    May 24, 2023 at 14:26

1 Answer 1

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There are quite a number of processes/procedures that may be accessing a disk. Here are some:

  • Windows Optimize Drives feature (dfrgui.exe) periodically (by default it runs on a schedule) checks on the drives and runs some optimizations (including - but not limited to - Defragmenting the drive)
  • Windows has S.M.A.R.T. monitoring and will warn you if the drive is failing (see for example the error here) for which it needs to access the drive to check
  • File Indexing for Search (like you said)
  • Any anti-malware (the System's or installed) would have scheduled scans that access all drives/paths to check for viruses
  • The File Explorer's Navigation Pane shows the available drives. I assume that requires somehow "pinging" the device to make sure it's still there

And there are probably many more things as well. This can include any random program/application that for some reason (should it make sense or not) checks the available disks.

When you are on Windows and see that behavior, you can utilize the built-in Windows Resource Monitor or the Sysinternals Process Monitor while it happens to check what is accessing any path in D:.

As far as "Will Windows's behavior reduce the lifespan of HDD", I would say that No. It's extremely minimal, and the lifespan of an HDD (as it relates to read and writes) is virtually infinite.

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  • Ah, thanks! That clarifies it better for me. Good to know that it won't mess up the lifespan even though I'm not really using it. Only thing of interest now is that "end noise". That high pitched noise that lasts one second. I've read somewhere that it could be the disk being "parked" or something similar. (I haven't heard any clicking nor had any issues with the drive)
    – gamingmsi
    May 24, 2023 at 15:02
  • It' still weird, at this moment I have two external drive connected (win10) that keep quiet until I access them. May 24, 2023 at 15:10
  • @JoepvanSteen Maybe because mine is an internal HDD? Maybe not, I don't know, it's just irritating me when I hear it getting woken up when I'm doing absolutely nothing. Linux has this "ZzZ" sign on it and when I access it the same sign is gone but I hear nothing.
    – gamingmsi
    May 24, 2023 at 15:17
  • ah, sorry, missed that. May 24, 2023 at 15:32

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