Bitlocker waking up non-encrypted HDD drives every hour

I am confused why people can't understand the problem I have described.

1. My problem is NOT about WHOLE COMPUTER going SLEEP or AWAKE.

2. My problem is HDD (hard disk, not SSD) that are NOT encrypted being SPINNED UP FROM "SLEEP" EVERY HOUR by BitLocker, which is shown in screenshots, and I can hear mechanics of drives at same second. HDDs that ARE ENCRYPTED REMAIN "SLEEP".

"SLEEP" = Windows power feature to turn off inactive disks after X minutes, X for me is 10

Sebastian7 said:

I am confused why people can't understand the problem I have described.

1) - Because the issue you describe is odd and extremely unlikely to be the cause of your issue....

Sebastian7 said:

So I'm running Bitlocker encrypted and non-encrypted HDD disks and have set up disk to sleep after 5 minutes.

However, every hour Bitlocker wakes up the disks that are _not_encrypted, apparently to check if they can be encrypted, or something similar. Disks that have all partitions encrypted are not affected and remain sleep.

2) - Because though you mention HDD drives, your post below is a bit confusing as you mentions SSD's....

Sebastian7 said:

But how do you know SSD drives are not "spinning" up? Because in my case I can clearly hear mechanics spinning up. But you cant't hear SSD drives so how to tell if they are sleeping or not?

Again, my computer is NOT sleeping or waking at any point, only disks.

Thus my reply....

sygnus21 said:

First off, there are no "mechanical parts" inside an SSD so I've no idea what you're hearing but it's definitely not parts spinning inside your SSD drive. Again, SSD drives are not mechanical drives and don't use mechanical parts to operate. It's what actually separates them from the traditional HDD drives.
Some further reading....

• SSD vs HDD
• What is an SSD? The ultimate explanation of the solid-state drive

With that, if you're hearing spinning noises you've either got HDD drives in your system, or something else is going on. Regardless, even in that situation (having HDD drives), I'm not sure BitLocker does this on-off thing that's causing your sleep issues.

BTW many (including me), have sleep issues with our PC's from time to time as there are far too many things that can actually impact sleep mode; but again, I'm quite sure BitLocker isn't one of them.

Please clarify which drives you actually have.

Going back here....

Sebastian7 said:

1. My problem is NOT about WHOLE COMPUTER going SLEEP or AWAKE.

2. My problem is HDD (hard disk, not SSD) that are NOT encrypted being SPINNED UP FROM "SLEEP" EVERY HOUR by BitLocker, which is shown in screenshots, and I can hear mechanics of drives at same second. HDDs that ARE ENCRYPTED REMAIN "SLEEP".

"SLEEP" = Windows power feature to turn off inactive disks after X minutes, X for me is 10

When a PC is sleep it is in an extreme power save mode, which means there would be no activity to include any drive(s) - SSD or HDD activity. So the notion that unencrypted drives are waking up the PC makes no sense because whether a drive is encrypted or not has no bearing on Sleep Mode.

The PC is either sleep or wake... not both, which is what you're basically saying with this.... "Again, my computer is NOT sleeping or waking at any point, only disks." And this... "HDDs that ARE ENCRYPTED REMAIN "SLEEP"."

Again the PC will either be awake or sleep... not both. That's our confusion.

Further reading - System Power States

Lol this is getting ridiculous.

1. My PC is not sleeping, its ON 100% TIME and I dont't want it to sleep.
2. I only want my HDDs to POWER OFF AFTER 10 MINUTES IDLE, which works FINE.
3. But EVERY HOUR Bitlocker is SPINNING UP SOME OF THE POWERED OFF DISKS FOR SOME STUPID REASON, so they dont remain powered off as they should.
4. Also see screenshots, if you don't understand them don't bother to post

Please stop refering "PC sleep issues " because it has nothing to do with this. Actually, forget whole word "sleep" if you don't get it in this context.

PS. I was talking about YOUR SSDs

We can only go by what you wrote. Anyway I'm sorry I have no answer for you.

Good luck.

Hey Sebastian, did you find a solution to this problem? I have the same issue.

Looking through the bdesvc code, I can see it does some telemetry collection every hour and every 12 hours. That is highly annoying on sleeping magnetic disks.

I think if you're not mounting and unmounting BitLocker volumes, just stopping the service is harmless. If you do want to do that, then I think a code patch is the only option, but at least it's nice and easy.

simplex said:

Hey Sebastian, did you find a solution to this problem? I have the same issue.

Looking through the bdesvc code, I can see it does some telemetry collection every hour and every 12 hours. That is highly annoying on sleeping magnetic disks.

I think if you're not mounting and unmounting BitLocker volumes, just stopping the service is harmless. If you do want to do that, then I think a code patch is the only option, but at least it's nice and easy.

Hi, my solution was to encrypt all drives of physical magnetic disks. Where did you find this bdesvc code if I may ask?