I am running windows 7 professional. My computer has two hard drives in it, but the media drive (no programs/etc) is louder than the entire computer. Is there a program I can install to provide a one-click mount/dismount and spin down behavior?

I tried setting the power options to turn off the hard disks, but it invariably spins right back up immediately after spinning down. No idea why.

3/23/2011 11:54:10 AM

Ok, crap. I found this program which seems to do exactly what I want. It dismounts and spins down the drive as desired. The drive can be recovered through the same program by clicking "Scan for hardware changes", which spins up and mounts the drive...but then it spins back down within seconds of any activity, as if the power options were set to turn off hard disk after two seconds, so doing anything on the drive has it constantly spinning down and up again.

http://mt-naka.com/hotswap/index_enu.htm

3/23/2011 12:32:51 PM

if the drive is that loud it's probably about to fail.

Or it's an old western digital

3/23/2011 12:38:50 PM

I don't think so. But, if you are right, then shutting it down for more of the day should extend its life.

3/23/2011 2:40:14 PM

not really... everything I've seen on it says that power cycles are the killers, not use. Drives get closer to their MTBF by being constantly operating with good power supplies. But whatever I read was probably 3-5 years ago - that could have changed.

3/23/2011 2:43:23 PM

I never had a problem with a hard drive until I enabled the power settings that had my drive spin up and down. Obviously, your mileage my vary.

Also, did you just recently install Windows 7?

3/23/2011 4:39:20 PM

Nope. Installed Win7 when it came out.

3/23/2011 4:42:33 PM

if the drive is being spun back up either A) something is accessing it or B) theres something fubared with the drive's firmware.

grab process monitor: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896645
fire it up and wait for your drive to spin down. Note the time (or maybe clear process monitor)

Then wait for the disk to spin back up and search through process monitor to figure out what was using the disk. You should be able to create a file filter (Path contains X:\ or w/e drive letter) which should show you waht procs are accessing the drive.

3/23/2011 4:50:28 PM