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I have a SSD which I have my OS on and some other important programs on and a regular HDD with games/movies and stuff. Just wondering if I could turn of the HDD somehow when I don't use it? They're both connected with SATA.

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up vote 6 down vote accepted

Control Panel -> Power Options -> Change advanced power settings -> Hard Disk -> Turn off hard disk after -> (some number of minutes)

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And this works pretty well. My media disk is set up this way. Unless I'm watching a movie, accessing images or listening to music stored on this disk, it's powered down. I've gotten used to clicking on Windows Media Player and hearing the drive spin up. Reminds me of the old days when we had a SCSI subsystem with delayed start. To start all three drives at once would throw the PS into shutdown. Running current was vastly less than start current. So, Whirr, rattle rattle, hum occurred three separate times and then your server was up. –  Fiasco Labs Oct 23 '11 at 5:15
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