Turning off drives when not needed?

[Over Here]

I have a PC that does a lot of Video editing & for that you need lots of
hard disk storage. I currently have 3 large drives in my PC. When I'm not
using the PC for video these extra drives are consuming power, producing
heat & noise. I thought that I should see if there is a better way of
handling this situation.

I know what I can go for a physical solution like putting 2 drives into
removable caddies & only have them in place when needed. Is there also a
software solution? I was thinking along the lines of using identities, dual
booting etc. In other words some way to have the extra drives be turned off
by software when not needed? Any ideas?

 

[Richard Urban [MVP]]

Desktop | Properties | Screen Saver | Power

See option to turn off hard disks.

--
Regards,

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User

Quote from: George Ankner
"If you knew as much as you thought you know,
You would realize that you don't know what you thought you knew!"

 

[Over Here]

Does using this setting mean that the hard drives will restart atomically if
& only if I try to either read or write to them & when go back to being
dormant?

Desktop | Properties | Screen Saver | Power

See option to turn off hard disks.

--
Regards,

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User

Quote from: George Ankner
"If you knew as much as you thought you know,
You would realize that you don't know what you thought you knew!"

 

[Richard Urban [MVP]]

The drive goes to sleep but wakes up if something has to write to the drive
or access the files on the drive. The process will be slowed down a tad
because the drive has to spin up to do the writing/reading.

--
Regards,

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User

Quote from: George Ankner
"If you knew as much as you thought you know,
You would realize that you don't know what you thought you knew!"

Does using this setting mean that the hard drives will restart atomically
if & only if I try to either read or write to them & when go back to being
dormant?

 

[Bob Willard]

I have a PC that does a lot of Video editing & for that you need lots of
hard disk storage. I currently have 3 large drives in my PC. When I'm not
using the PC for video these extra drives are consuming power, producing
heat & noise. I thought that I should see if there is a better way of
handling this situation.

I know what I can go for a physical solution like putting 2 drives into
removable caddies & only have them in place when needed. Is there also a
software solution? I was thinking along the lines of using identities, dual
booting etc. In other words some way to have the extra drives be turned off
by software when not needed? Any ideas?

The power savings will be 5-10W per HD. Pretty minor.