Hard drive turns off, even though its set to 'Never'.

[Guest]

Using Vista Home Premium clean install for 3 weeks, not too much troubles.
One thing I notice.... I have 3 hard drives, one for OS and others for
storage. Now I can be doing stuff on my computer and I click Internet
Explorer for example, and it starts to load it up, then it sort of hesitates
for a couple seconds with the borders and colors sort of half loaded, then I
hear a hard drive start up (whine a little as usual as it fires up) so I can
definately tell is was turned off. As soon as its done that then Internet
Explorer will finish loading just fine.
Anyway the hard drives should be on all the time. I have Hard Disks to Never
shut off in Power Options. You know how you have a time in minutes and you
can reduce the minutes to 0 and then to Never. I hit Apply and then come back
and check and it is never, although the next day or so after a reboot of
course, it seems to forget the setting I changed!
I have a similar experience with my mouse (I posted here in another group
for hardware). The mouse will also not remember any settings I change. I
speed the pointer up and then the next day the pointers slow again! (Using
Microsoft driver). Like the Apply button only works for one day!

It makes me wonder what other settings it keeps forgetting.

Is there any other place I need to go to turn the hard drive settings off?
Is something else overriding the Power Settings in Control Panel? ....so the
drives stay on as long as the computers on. The computer is nto set to sleep
or hibernate, so when I am not on it it is in Standby and the monitor is the
only thing that turns off after 20 mins. It is powered off every night.

This is the same system I have used for 2 years with XP, same settings. Its
a P4 3.4 Ghz, 2GB RAM. So makes me wonder when I see things hesitate and hard
drives make noises like they were off!

Thanks..
Regards,
Neil

 

[Richard Urban]

I have noticed the same thing with my four hard drives. It doesn't cause a
problem - yet. It is silly though to have to wait for the drives to spin up
just so the computer can shut down!

--


Regards,

Richard Urban MVP
Microsoft Windows Shell/User

 

[Guest]

Try setting your mobo BIOS ACPI to Suspend Type S3. It didn't prevent my hdd
from turning on and off but I noticed almost no delay or interruption on
whatever it is I'm currently doing when the hdd turns off. On S1, when the
hdd turns off, the computer freezes for 2 to 3 secs, then there's a clicking
and whining sound indicating that the hdd just turns on. My Power Setting in
Vista is already in High Performance mode, I set the hdd to Never turn off
but I just couldn't stop this cycling of hdd turning on and off. Never did
this in XP. 3 SATA 300 hdd's, Hitachi, not overheating at all as I have an
open case with 120mm fans blowing directly at the hdd's. Just barely warm to
the touch. Although I have to say Vista Sleep mode is great. All the hdd's
turn off when in this mode. Any ideas to stop this annoying cycling is
appreciated. Mobo BIOS is up to date. ASUS P5WD2 Premium, Pentium D 940, 1GB
Patriot, Vista 64 Ultimate.