Way to Keep Drive From Spinning When Not In Use?

[rojobahr]

I remember recently hearing in an LMG Clips video a mention of keeping hard drives from spinning to increase their longevity. If I am remembering correctly, how does one do this? I have a 4TB storage drive that I leave unplugged when not in use to increase its lifetime, but it's a pain to open my case and plug it in every time I want to retrieve something, then unplug it after. I would rather cut out the middle man and just keep it completely idle when not reading/writing.

 

I think the video was the one when Linus and Yvonne were talking about hard drives and there was something about how Linus has a drive set up to not spin when not in use (it's late where I am and I'm too tired and lazy to look for the video and check).

 

I could just be having a massive brain fart (because I'm tired) if hard drives already to this. If that is the case, then I'm sorry for wasting your time. If hard drives do not already do this, then I would like to know how to achieve the spin-less idle state. 

[Guest]

An easy way to unplug it when not in use is to use an external enclosure that you can unplug when it's not in use. 

[bmx6454]

you can do this in power management.

[Enderman]

Windows power management lets you set how long before a hard drive goes to sleep and stops spinning.

If you use it more than a few times a week you should probably just leave it on, sometimes leaing something on continuously is better than having it go on and off repeatedly.

 

Also, you could use a hotswap bay to plug and unplug drives easily.

[5x5]

Constantly spinning up and down puts FAR more stress on a drive than just letting it spin constantly

[Tad Bittoomuch]

Windows is able to do this for you - enter the number of minutes the drive has to be idle before Windows causes it to spin down.

Start -> Settings -> System -> Power and Sleep -> Additional Power Settings -> Change Plan Settings (on active power plan) -> Change Advanced Power Settings