Turn off/on (or hot swap) hard drive in Windows 2000

[Slashed Zero]

Hi!

Hust upgraded my 60GB Maxtor drive to 120GB Seagate. I would like to
continue using the Maxtor drive for daily backup of parts of the Seagate.
Problem: the Maxtor is too loud (one of my reasons to move to Seagate). I
would like to disable the Maxtor and then only get it running to copy some
data to the disk (once a day) and shut it down again. I thought maybe this
could be done by using dynamic disk hot swap features of Win2000 disk
management. Can this be done in any way? I can't seem to find any clear info
on this using Google.

Thanks in advance!

 

[Robert Barr]

Hi!

Hust upgraded my 60GB Maxtor drive to 120GB Seagate. I would like to
continue using the Maxtor drive for daily backup of parts of the Seagate.
Problem: the Maxtor is too loud (one of my reasons to move to Seagate). I
would like to disable the Maxtor and then only get it running to copy some
data to the disk (once a day) and shut it down again. I thought maybe this
could be done by using dynamic disk hot swap features of Win2000 disk
management. Can this be done in any way?

External enclosure.

They're ugly, but they get the job done.

After horsing around with removable drive bays for ages on end, I found
them just too frustrating & somehow killed a few Fujitsu drives.

I use a Plumax USB 2.0 enclosure ($30 shipped) and it's as fast as IDE.
I was a serious Doubting Thomas about these things, but not anymore.
I'm glad they've dropped in price like they have; they were about $70,
depending on brand, which is pretty steep for a box & an interface.

 

[Will Dormann]

Hi!

Hust upgraded my 60GB Maxtor drive to 120GB Seagate. I would like to
continue using the Maxtor drive for daily backup of parts of the Seagate.
Problem: the Maxtor is too loud (one of my reasons to move to Seagate). I
would like to disable the Maxtor and then only get it running to copy some
data to the disk (once a day) and shut it down again. I thought maybe this
could be done by using dynamic disk hot swap features of Win2000 disk
management. Can this be done in any way? I can't seem to find any clear info
on this using Google.

You could always get an external USB2/Firewire enclosure and just turn
on the drive when you want to do a backup. That's what I do.


-WD

 

[Slashed Zero]

You could always get an external USB2/Firewire enclosure and just turn

on the drive when you want to do a backup. That's what I do.

Thanks for your replies! The thing is I'd like a way to do this without any
external enclosure, so that I can just keep the drive in my PC case, on an
IDE interface, but 'simply' switched off. For $70 I can also get a brand new
Seagate 80GB disk that will not be noisy either, plus I don't have USB2 (1.1
only), so an external drive does not seem to be a handy solution. Any other
ideas?

In the worst case scenario, I'd have to buy a hard drive bracket. But this
would mean I'd have to power down before backup, insert the drive, power up,
take the backup, power down again and then reboot without the hard disk...
This is such a lot of pain I would probably not take backups too often, so
it'd kind of be useless...

 

[Scott Alfter]

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I would like to disable the Maxtor and then only get it running to copy
some data to the disk (once a day) and shut it down again. I thought maybe
this could be done by using dynamic disk hot swap features of Win2000 disk
management. Can this be done in any way?

If you put the drive in a FireWire enclosure, you can hotplug it whenever
you want. It'll also be portable, so you can share it between computers.

(You'll most likely need to add a FireWire controller...they're cheap. You
could do the same with USB, but even USB 2.0 is slower.)

_/_ Scott Alfter (address in header doesn't receive mail)
/ v \ send mail to $firstname@$lastname.us
(IIGS( http://alfter.us/ Top-posting!
\_^_/ rm -rf /bin/laden >What's the most annoying thing on Usenet?

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[Folkert Rienstra]

Thanks for your replies! The thing is I'd like a way to do this without any
external enclosure, so that I can just keep the drive in my PC case,

on an IDE interface, but 'simply' switched off.

Well, unless you have a free IDE channel already you will have to buy
an addin card and rig up something to have the drive spin up and down
at your will (on a semi permanent basis).

For $70 I can also get a brand new
Seagate 80GB disk that will not be noisy either, plus I don't have USB2 (1.1
only), so an external drive does not seem to be a handy solution. Any other
ideas?

In the worst case scenario, I'd have to buy a hard drive bracket. But this
would mean I'd have to power down before backup, insert the drive, power up,
take the backup, power down again and then reboot without the hard disk...

You could just leave it in and only use the bay's power switch.

 

[Slashed Zero]

In the worst case scenario, I'd have to buy a hard drive bracket. But
this

disk...

You could just leave it in and only use the bay's power switch.

But this would still require reboot right? I could not simply switch off the
hard disk after use while continuing to run Windows?

 

[Arno Wagner]

But this would still require reboot right? I could not simply switch off the
hard disk after use while continuing to run Windows?

That is mostly a limitation of Windows. There might be special drivers
that support hot-swap. Actually on USB/FireWire/SCSI hot-swap
is a standard feature, so the file-system layer should already
support it.

Arno

 

[John]

power

But this would still require reboot right? I could not simply switch off the
hard disk after use while continuing to run Windows?

Try disabling the controller in Device Manager, turn on the drive, re-enable
the controller, then select "scan for hardware changes"

 

[chrisv]

Hust upgraded my 60GB Maxtor drive to 120GB Seagate. I would like to
continue using the Maxtor drive for daily backup of parts of the Seagate.
Problem: the Maxtor is too loud (one of my reasons to move to Seagate). I
would like to disable the Maxtor and then only get it running to copy some
data to the disk (once a day) and shut it down again.

I have a Romtec Trios II harddrive switch that has this capability. I
use it to switch between different drives for Windows and Linux, but
it can also connect (and power) two drives at a time or only one
alone, depending on how you press the buttons.

http://www.romtecusa.com/trios/product/product.htm

 

[Slashed Zero]

Try disabling the controller in Device Manager, turn on the drive, re-enable
the controller, then select "scan for hardware changes"

Maybe that could do the trick... I'll test it in a few days when I've put in
the second drive! Thanks!

 

[Slashed Zero]

I have a Romtec Trios II harddrive switch that has this capability. I
use it to switch between different drives for Windows and Linux, but
it can also connect (and power) two drives at a time or only one
alone, depending on how you press the buttons.

http://www.romtecusa.com/trios/product/product.htm

Wow - seems like a nice piece of gear. I'm gonna see whether I can find a
local dealer for this (Belgium). Thanks!

 

[Folkert Rienstra]

But this would still require reboot right?
No.

I could not simply switch off the hard disk after use while continuing
to run Windows?

Why not?

 

[Slashed Zero]

You could just leave it in and only use the bay's power switch.

Why not?

Really? Would this be like ejecting a CD-ROM? Isn't this dangerous (e.g.
because of write-behind caching etc)? If you're really sure it can be done,
this would be the ideal solution as a hard disk rack only costs about $15 or
so.

 

[Folkert Rienstra]

Really? Would this be like ejecting a CD-ROM?

No. You will get errors as soon as something wants to access the
drive within a certain time period. After that Windows will pro-
bably remove the drive automatically (not sure for ide drives).

Isn't this dangerous (e.g. because of write-behind caching etc)?

Well, if you insist on copying data to it and flipping the switch at
the same time, sure.

If you want to be safe remove the drive in Device Manager, then
turn off the drive.

For using the drive after it is switched on again, select "scan for
hardware changes" or "refresh" (depending on your windows version).

 

[Slashed Zero]

Really? Would this be like ejecting a CD-ROM?

No. You will get errors as soon as something wants to access the
drive within a certain time period. After that Windows will pro-
bably remove the drive automatically (not sure for ide drives).


Well, if you insist on copying data to it and flipping the switch at
the same time, sure.

If you want to be safe remove the drive in Device Manager, then
turn off the drive.

For using the drive after it is switched on again, select "scan for
hardware changes" or "refresh" (depending on your windows version).

Sounds like a good plan! - simply removing the device in Device manager...
Thank you!

 

[Paul Atreides]

Hi All,

Windows should be able to handle that using power management with ACPI.
I have 3 HD on my PC, one dedicated to backups (GHOST and SNAPSHOT
images).

Go in settings, control panel, power options, turn off hard disks, try 3
minutes.

Windows wont turn off your main (system) drive as it always writes and
read from it. Make sure you don't have file access to the second drive
and it should be turned off automatically after 3 minutes (without file
access).