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#1
Turning off Hard Drives to Reduce Noise/Power
My desktop has 1 SSD and 4 HDDs, running Windows off the SSD
I want to turn the hard drives off when I'm not using them in order to reduce noise from the PC and power consumption (it does matter to me because I often run my PC off a UPS). What are my best options for doing that?
Currently, I have set my Windows power options to turn off hard drives after a set time, but with this approach the hard drives turn off and on too many times, which I imagine would not be good for the drives. Also, with the drives off, if I put my PC to sleep, ALL hard drives must come on before the pc goes to standby, which again would cause wear.
My question is, what is the best way to go about it? And is there any way to prevent unnecessary access to the drives by Windows so that they dont randomly keep turning on?(like in Linux, the drives can be unmounted easily, preventing rogue access to them)