How to Turn Off Hard Disk After Idle in Windows 10
The Turn off hard disk after setting in Power Options lets users set to have hard disks (HDD) power down after a specified time of HDD inactivity is detected. This setting will not affect a SSD (Solid State Drive) or NVMe.
Having your HDDs automatically turned off after being idle can help save energy and extend a PC's battery life.
When you or anything tries to access a HDD that has been turned off, there will be a delay of a few seconds as the HDD automatically spins back up and is turned back on before being able to access it.
This tutorial will show you how to turn off hard disks after being idle for specified minutes or to never in your power plan in Windows 10.
If you have set to turn off hard disk after idle, then you will experience a delay if you restart explorer since you will have to wait for all disks turned off to spin back up and turn on before explorer is restarted.
Contents
- Option One: To Change Turn Off Hard Disk After Idle Setting in Power Options
- Option Two: To Change Turn Off Hard Disk After Idle Setting in Command Prompt
1 Open your advanced power plan settings.
2 Expand open Hard disk and Turn off hard disk after, set how many minutes or never for what you want, and click/tap on OK. (see screenshot below)
The default is 20 minutes. It is not recommended to set a low amount of minutes. Doing so can cause more wear and tear on HDDs since they will spin up and down more often.
1 Open a command prompt.
2 Enter the command(s) below you want to use into the command prompt, and press Enter. (see screenshots below)
(On battery)
powercfg -change -disk-timeout-dc <minutes>
OR
powercfg /SETDCVALUEINDEX SCHEME_CURRENT 0012ee47-9041-4b5d-9b77-535fba8b1442 6738e2c4-e8a5-4a42-b16a-e040e769756e <seconds>
AND/OR
(Plugged in)
powercfg -change -disk-timeout-ac <minutes>
OR
powercfg /SETACVALUEINDEX SCHEME_CURRENT 0012ee47-9041-4b5d-9b77-535fba8b1442 6738e2c4-e8a5-4a42-b16a-e040e769756e <seconds>
Substitute <minutes> in the commands above with how many minutes you want to turn off hard disk after.
Substitute <seconds> in the commands above with how many seconds you want to turn off hard disk after.
Using 0 (zero) minutes or seconds will be the same as "Never".
The default data value is 1200 seconds (20 minutes).
That's it,
Shawn Brink
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