batch scripts for turning off hard drives from windows

Silencing hard drives, optical drives and other storage devices

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Pappnaas
Posts: 726
Joined: Mon May 16, 2011 11:23 am
Location: Germany

Re: batch scripts for turning off hard drives from windows

Post by Pappnaas » Tue Aug 06, 2013 10:06 am

The thing is, whatever the name here contains, a server is a server, by definition. If i find a server to be too noisy, then your planning beforehand went wrong.

It is a known fact, that HDDs make noise, so if i plan on using something with HDDs 24/7 i have to accept some kind of noise, eliminate that noise or aim for a location, where that noise doesn't matter.

But i shouldn't complain about a Windows Server not spinning down HDDs because that noise is driving me crazy. IMHO something went wrong before.

zsero
Posts: 95
Joined: Mon Jan 07, 2008 3:51 pm
Location: Edinburgh, Scotland

Re: batch scripts for turning off hard drives from windows

Post by zsero » Tue Aug 06, 2013 10:12 am

Pappnaas wrote:The thing is, whatever the name here contains, a server is a server, by definition. If i find a server to be too noisy, then your planning beforehand went wrong.

It is a known fact, that HDDs make noise, so if i plan on using something with HDDs 24/7 i have to accept some kind of noise, eliminate that noise or aim for a location, where that noise doesn't matter.

But i shouldn't complain about a Windows Server not spinning down HDDs because that noise is driving me crazy. IMHO something went wrong before.
Look, the world has changed. A server is not a noisy big box which runs on 200W in a rack, but something which people keep in their living room! Look into the market of NAS devices! These brands like Synology, QNap, etc. have grown exponentially in the last few years, for providing an easy to configure and SILENT server which anyone can keep always on in their living room!

Look into any Amazon review: you'll keep looking that people LOVE these little servers because they are quiet. And HDDs use a lot of power, the power usage is DOUBLE for spinning <> idle HDDs in a NAS.

Read this review for example:
http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/nas/nas- ... 3-reviewed
Power consumption measured 31 W with four WD Red 3TB 7200 RPM (WD30EFRX) drives I supplied spun up and 16 W when the programmable drive spindown kicked in. Fan noise, in the default "Quiet" mode (the other two modes are "Cool" and "Low-Power") was barely audible and there was little idle drive noise in my quiet home office environment. So I rated the 413's noise as low.

Pappnaas
Posts: 726
Joined: Mon May 16, 2011 11:23 am
Location: Germany

Re: batch scripts for turning off hard drives from windows

Post by Pappnaas » Tue Aug 06, 2013 11:06 pm

zsero wrote:Look, the world has changed. A server is not a noisy big box which runs on 200W in a rack, but something which people keep in their living room! Look into the market of NAS devices! These brands like Synology, QNap, etc. have grown exponentially in the last few years, for providing an easy to configure and SILENT server which anyone can keep always on in their living room!
You are right. Things have changed. But the OP complains about a windows problem, so no NAS involved. I agree, modern NAS like Synology or QNAPs are mostly silent, quick and reliable and need really low amounts of power.
zsero wrote:Look into any Amazon review: you'll keep looking that people LOVE these little servers because they are quiet. And HDDs use a lot of power, the power usage is DOUBLE for spinning <> idle HDDs in a NAS.
True, spinning HDDs use more power than when idle or on standby. But in theory there could be a point where the act of powering/unpowering consumes more power than letting it spin right away. I'm not sure if that point can be reached in reality.

But since the OP is complaining about a Windows Server not spinning down HDDs to his liking, i still think the OP's planning wasn't right on spot.

zsero
Posts: 95
Joined: Mon Jan 07, 2008 3:51 pm
Location: Edinburgh, Scotland

Re: batch scripts for turning off hard drives from windows

Post by zsero » Wed Aug 07, 2013 2:16 am

Pappnaas wrote:
zsero wrote:Look, the world has changed. A server is not a noisy big box which runs on 200W in a rack, but something which people keep in their living room! Look into the market of NAS devices! These brands like Synology, QNap, etc. have grown exponentially in the last few years, for providing an easy to configure and SILENT server which anyone can keep always on in their living room!
You are right. Things have changed. But the OP complains about a windows problem, so no NAS involved. I agree, modern NAS like Synology or QNAPs are mostly silent, quick and reliable and need really low amounts of power.
zsero wrote:Look into any Amazon review: you'll keep looking that people LOVE these little servers because they are quiet. And HDDs use a lot of power, the power usage is DOUBLE for spinning <> idle HDDs in a NAS.
True, spinning HDDs use more power than when idle or on standby. But in theory there could be a point where the act of powering/unpowering consumes more power than letting it spin right away. I'm not sure if that point can be reached in reality.

But since the OP is complaining about a Windows Server not spinning down HDDs to his liking, i still think the OP's planning wasn't right on spot.
There is a market between the big Windows Servers and the tiny NAS boxes: Microservers. Extremely popular as well. Just look at the HP N36L/N40L/N54L products. They are amazing little cheap x86 servers. Many users use Windows on these, but there are loads of other OSs, like FreeNas, unRaid, etc. They are all quiet (after a fan swap), and use small amounts of power!

ezechiel1917
Posts: 6
Joined: Thu Dec 22, 2011 12:47 am

Re: batch scripts for turning off hard drives from windows

Post by ezechiel1917 » Tue Sep 17, 2013 1:22 am

Recently I made a fresh system install and found out that one drive was resuming from suspend regularly just because of low disk space.
Now all inactive drives are correctly suspended by Windows power management unless they are accessed to.
Already got few exceptions when drive were woken up by scheduled tasks though.
So I recommend everyone who's trying to troubleshoot random drive wake ups to check Microsoft tasks in Task Scheduler and disable unneccessary ones.
Software installations still mostly wake up all drives though. But I can live with that..

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