We all have those “damn, that drives me crazy” moments with computing, I expect. My particular “damn, that drives me crazy” moment, repeated throughout the day, day in and day out is, waiting for the auxiliary Hard Drives (non-OS drives) on my system, to spin up.
Most Hard Drives feature a firmware auto spin down function, independent of the OS, that shuts down the drive after 10 minutes, or so, of inactivity. A primary Hard Drive, of course, can be controlled by adjusting power options in the OS’s advanced power settings menu. But, not auxiliary Hard Drives.
So, dealing with a repetitive non-responsive time lag of 3/5 seconds while my D, or E drive spins up – short though it may be – is annoying. Particularly, since I need to save my work periodically to drive D, or drive E – and, it’s generally outside the 10 minute spin down window.
I found a small (22 KB) free (open source) application, NoSleepHD, which I hoped might solve this annoyance. Despite the fact, that this small application is designed specifically to keep external Hard Drives from entering sleep mode, I gave it a try. Alas, it was a “no go”. So, I’m on the hunt for a freebie application which will solve the “damn, that drives me crazy” daily refrain.
Still, NoSleepHD is a simple, but nonetheless impressive little application, that writes a blank text file every few minutes (selectable 1 to 15) to an external Hard Drive (which effectively prevents the drive from entering sleep mode), which might come in handy for those who run with external Hard Drives.
Here’s a quick overview:
A simple GUI.
Click ‘Info’ tab to view drive information.
Monitor multiple drives by selecting, more drives in ‘Configuration’ tab. (Up to 5 External Hard Drives).
Hard drive monitoring can be stopped if necessary. (Which would allow the drive to go to auto-sleep).
Application can sit in the System Tray or simply minimized.
Auto-run at start-up can also be enabled.
System requirements: All versions of Windows.
Download at: Softpedia
Bill Mullins' Weblog - Tech Thoughts 