Prevent Disk Shut Down

[OFF]

Hi there.

 

My installation of Windows 7 64bits persistently shut downs my hard drives when idle for too long, even though I have set the corresponding option to Never shut them down.

This is particularly annoying when running Defraggler overnight only to find out the next morning that disks are off and Defraggler is stuck waiting for them to wake up.

 

It would be nice, if you could add whatever is necessary to keep disks from turning off.

 

Thanks for reading.

Have a nice day.

[Super Fast]

+ 1

 

I too, want to be able to run it without interruption!

[DennisD]

I was wondering why Windows is ignoring the "never shut down" setting?

 

I don't have Win7 so can't check this myself, but getting that setting to stick seems to be a two step process, a "tweak" according to this Windows 7 Tweaks website.

 

If you've already done this, my apologies. If you haven't, then it's worth a try.

 

Change the Power Plan To Maximum Performance:

[OFF]

First of all, I'd like to thank you DennisD just for taking the time to look into it.

 

I haven't changed my Power Plan to High Performance but I did set Turn off hard disk after to Never. It should do the trick anyway.

It seems like the Put computer to sleep option takes priority over the other options, which... could be seen as logical. The High Performance setting disables this option.

One alternative is to completely prevent my computer from going into Sleep Mode. I don't want to get to that point yet, because I still want the low energy profile when it is really idle.

 

Today I just noticed that while uTorrent is running, disks won't shut down.

The settings are still the same, so applications seem to be able to control when computer is allowed to take energy-efficient measures.

[Alan_B]

Are you sure that your HDD are not dropping into power saving mode themselves.

 

Some "Green" drives are not suitable for partition recovery image backups because a pause in data transfer allows them to spin down.

[Winapp2.ini]

Just to clarify: are you using a laptop?

 

@Alan: one of my 1.5TiB externals is "Green" and it spins down after 5 minutes of no read/writes. This is REALLY annoying, as I keep many music/video files on there, and if I pause them, they stutter when the drive realizes it has to spin up again. (#Firstworldproblems)

[DennisD]

I'm not a coder, but I don't imagine it would be too difficult to have that feature in Defraggler.

 

I was just curious as to why Windows was seemingly ignoring that setting. Another one of those Windows foibles which irritate more than anything else.

[OFF]

Aha! "Green" drives...

I have one of those inside the box, but I'm not sure if that is the one where Defraggler gets stuck.

 

I'll pay more attention at next defragmentation.

Windows takes some time to come back to life even though this "green" drive has no system partitions. Maybe Windows isn't shutting *all* disks down after all.

Strangely enough, when uTorrent is running, no disk shuts down nor the system goes into Sleep Mode.

 

By the way, I'm not using a laptop.

 

Thanks all for sharing your thoughts.

[Alan_B]

Try a sequence, defragging only one drive a night.

That way when you defrag a green drive it "should" be awake when you start it,

and not bored to death whilst waiting for the others to be defragged first.

[Super Fast]

Use this > http://www.softpedia.com/get/Others/Miscellaneous/Caffeine.shtml (Prevents your computer from going to sleep)

 

Use manual launch of Caffeine, & set Defraggler to auto-shutdown after a defrag.

If you have experience using iexpress (start/run/iexpress & hit enter), you can even make a launcher that will launch caffeine, then defraggler.

 

Set it to launch C:/Program Files/Defraggler/Defraggler.exe, & do the same for Caffeine.

You can even drop it in the defraggler folder so you can create a shortcut to it on the desktop & give it a Defraggler shortcut icon.

 

Other settings, such as store file names using long file names may work much better for launching programs than using short.

Play around with the sections you can hide, etc, & you can get it nearly like you want.

 

Of course, I still wish Defraggler had this built into it...

[Winapp2.ini]

Interesting application, I may use that to stop my annoying external from spinning down when I pause my music!

[Super Fast]

Interesting application, I may use that to stop my annoying external from spinning down when I pause my music!

This may work on your main drive, but I am not certain the effectiveness of it on an external drive.

However, there are things you may try.

 

Certain hardware, under Device Manager, can be right clicked/properties & have a power management tab at the end where you can unselect to allow windows to turn off the device to save power. Of course, this only applies to devices that are plugged in, & yours may or may not have that.

 

Also, since you have Windows 7, you may be able to branch out advanced micro-management under control panel where your power management is, & see if you can custom select your device & select 0 power management for it.

 

At any rate, here are a few free utilities that should enable you to prevent your external drive from sleeping.

I am listing a few, because one of the utilities was said to have problems running in 64 bit, although that may be fixed by now, but if that does fail, one of the other ones listed should work great. Update me & let me know how this works for you.

 

No Sleep > http://nosleephd.codeplex.com/

Keep Awake > http://zababov.blogs...wer-saving.html

xSleep > http://xsleep.codeplex.com/

 

You may also be interested in Don't Sleep > http://www.softwareo...osoft/DontSleep

This utility will enable you to prevent system shutdown, Standby, Hibernate, Turn Off and Restart. Not only that, it also prevents logging off the computer, and the de-activation of the monitor or activation of the screen saver. (I also just emailed the author of this program to see if he can add support for blocking external drives from going to sleep, as well as 64 bit support, if it doesn't already have it)

 

I hope these help you, & be sure to let me know what you try & what works! Keep Awake has 64 bit support, & xSleep supports multiple drives.

 

* There is another little cheat you can do as well, such as installing a different video player than you normally use. Perhaps KM Player, or some other one. Take a small video file (Windows sample perhaps?) or even make a silent video in Windows Movie Maker, & move or copy it to your external drive that you want to keep awake.

 

Open KM (Or whatever player you downloaded) & set it to continuously loop. The "constant" activity should keep the drive from going to sleep.

I would imagine that you could even use a silent MP3 file if you wish.

[Winapp2.ini]

The problem resides within the firmware of the drive, power options don't effect it AFAICT

[Super Fast]

If power options do not affect it, try one of the programs listed above, such as xSleep, noSleep, or KeepAwake.

 

They are written to write a blank text file to the harddisk every so often, to prevent your drive from going to sleep.

 

Or, try looping a silent audio or video file in KM Player (or some other player) & minimize it to tray.

Be sure the file being played is from the drive you want to prevent going to sleep.

[Winapp2.ini]

I tried doing that (writing to a file every so often) using a script, but it didn't keep the drive spinning. That may have been the fault of the script though. I will definitely check out those programs.

[Alan_B]

I tried doing that (writing to a file every so often) using a script, but it didn't keep the drive spinning. That may have been the fault of the script though. I will definitely check out those programs.

Could also be the fault of using a cache.

If you disable the External Drive Cache then what you write gets written immediately,

when enabled the actual commit to drive may be deferred till later - possibly when Windows decides it is time to stop spinning so now we write

[Super Fast]

I tried doing that (writing to a file every so often) using a script, but it didn't keep the drive spinning. That may have been the fault of the script though. I will definitely check out those programs.

Try installing KM Player, being careful to decline the ask toolbar offering, then copy a sample movie or music file to the external drive u wish to keep spinning.

 

Run KM player, drag the video or mp3 onto the open player, then hit F5 function key to mark a selection near the beginning of the video or music file, & hit F6 function key near the end. If you place the start/stop loop points too close to the beginning or end, sometimes it will actually finish the file because of whatever reason, say, computer stutters a second or two because of processing something, causing KM player loop to fail till it went over the loop end, & stopping the playback.

 

Try running the looping file, & see if that causes the drive to fail to sleep. Works for me, so I was wondering if your drive is any different.

[Alan_B]

Try installing KM Player, being careful to decline the ask toolbar offering, then copy a sample movie or music file to the external drive u wish to keep spinning.

 

Run KM player, drag the video or mp3 onto the open player, then hit F5 function key to mark a selection near the beginning of the video or music file, & hit F6 function key near the end. If you place the start/stop loop points too close to the beginning or end, sometimes it will actually finish the file because of whatever reason, say, computer stutters a second or two because of processing something, causing KM player loop to fail till it went over the loop end, & stopping the playback.

 

Try running the looping file, & see if that causes the drive to fail to sleep. Works for me, so I was wondering if your drive is any different.

I would say that the HDD has a duty to spin and record whatever is WRITTEN, but possibly that action could be deferred till cache is finally flushed to disc if so configured.

 

I think it wrong to assume that it will spin when you repeatedly PLAY if what is being played remains available in any one of umpteen multi-level caches.

[Super Fast]

I would say that the HDD has a duty to spin and record whatever is WRITTEN, but possibly that action could be deferred till cache is finally flushed to disc if so configured.

 

I think it wrong to assume that it will spin when you repeatedly PLAY if what is being played remains available in any one of umpteen multi-level caches.

Depends.

 

Caches have a limited size. If the video you are playing is large enough, would it not have to flush parts from the buffer from time to time, to clear enough that it does not go over the size limit? At any rate, whether it is the constant check for the media from drive (D:, E:, F:, etc) or some other reason, seems to work for mine, which is why I suggested to try it.

 

You can try an MP3, & if that does not work, try a video file. It is at least worth trying, is it not? KM player can loop a file indefinitely upon the use of F5 to initiate the beginning of the loop, & F6 to mark the end point.