How to see why disks are spinning up in Windows 11?

DamirB · May 16, 2022

Hi all,

So I am running Windows 11 on my home server and since I am targeting minimal power usage when the machine is at idle (which it often is) I have configured the drives to spin down after half an our of inactivity. However, sometimes when I walk past the server I notice that the drives are active. The machine is doing absolutely nothing so I've got no clue why they are spinning. Can I check in Windows what the reason was the drives spun up? Weirdly I also have the feeling that when the system needs acces to only one drive, it spins up all of them.

Would love if someone could help me! Apart from Parsec and Emby there is absolutely nothing installed and I have actually removed most microsoft pre-installed apps.

i5 10400 (Boxed cooler)
Gigabyte B560M Aorus Pro
2x WD Red Plus, 4TB WD40EFZX + 1x WD Purple WD82PURX + 2 external WD USB drives
Corsair Vengeance LPX CMK16GX4M2E3200C16 (two DIMM's)
be quiet silent base 601
Corsair RM550x 2018
Samsung PM9A1 256GB SSD
Windows 11 Pro

Frostbite4075 · May 20, 2022

Check Task Manager, if you can't see anything there, check Resource Monitor. It's very normal for the drives to be active even while the computer is idling. The most common reason will be Indexing. You can turn off indexing if you want to, this might slow down searches though over time.

Applications and processes which are running are always going to use at least some disk IO for the most part. You also have to consider Windows updates and other program updates.