How to spindown(sleep) a SATA hard disk drive under Windows?

Question

I am using a 3.5" SATA HDD from the eSATA port of my laptop. The HDD is powered with another ATX power supply. Each time I unplug the eSATA, I cannot make the HDD spindown before I power off the ATX.

So, any tool to do this?

Solution 1

Have you tried savely removing it (perhaps only for USB) or unmounting the drive?

Else have a look at HotSwap!

You can treat the eSata like a HDD you're trying to hot swap, thus turning it off. But instead of swapping it, you just leave it off.

Features:

• Compatible user interface with the "Safely Remove Hardware" icon on Windows XP.
• Confirms all volumes assigned to the drive are not in use before removing it.
• Spin-down the drive to remove the drive safely.
• Not only fixed disk drives but also other type of drives can be removed.
• Runs without user interface by given command line switch and also the message popup can be suppressed.

Solution 2

Hard Disk Sentinel at www.HDSentinel.com is a good tool that lets you adjust your Advanced Power Management of each individual hard drive. It allows a range of settings that effect the spindown (or not). It also lets you adjust the AAM (Advanced Acoustic Management) - how loud the hard drive sounds vs the tradeoff of increased seek performance.

The free version has a nag screen but lets you adjust all these indefinitely.

Comments

[Galaxy]

I do try to unmount(using the icon of removeable devides) the device before unplug, but I cannot be sure whether microsoft will spindown the HDD. I'd like a tiny tool to help me to make sure it do spindown.

[nik]

:-) "savely removing" is a great phrase!