How to idle a rarely used HDD

**windranger** · July 25th, 2012, 04:00 AM

On my desktop PC, beside the main HDD with the master-partition I also use a separate HDD which I actually access quite rarely, say once a week.

So I want to know if there's any application utility out there which can let me stop the HDD when I don't need it running and restart it when I need it.
I want to reduce both the overall power consumption and the wear of the disk.

Thanks.

**Taxmancometh** · July 25th, 2012, 04:14 AM

I don't think it can be done.

**Nude_Lewd_Man** · July 25th, 2012, 05:10 AM

Another (non-software) option would be to remove it from the case, and put it into an external enclosure - then you can physically power it up/down as you need it...

**Bizkitkid2001** · July 25th, 2012, 05:11 AM

What kind of hard drive is it?(Brand and model number) A lot of modern hard drives turn off automatically after a certain amount of time and turn back on only when needed.

**Bizkitkid2001** · July 25th, 2012, 05:14 AM

Originally Posted by Nude_Lewd_Man

Another (non-software) option would be to remove it from the case, and put it into an external enclosure - then you can physically power it up/down as you need it...

Adding to N_L_M's comment, you can get a HDD dock like this Newegg.com - Thermaltake BlacX ST0005U External Hard Drive SATA Enclosure Docking Station 2.5” & 3.5” USB 2.0 & eSATA

I have that same dock and it works great. It has made dealing with my multiple old hard drives a lot easier now.

My Grandparents also use a similar dock, one that can support two hard drives at once. They have multiple backup drives they keep in their safe and they use their hard drive dock whenever they want to quickly update the data on the drives in their safe (4 drives total with all having the same data for redundancy, a poor man's raid setup, lol)