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I want to find out what the most noisy component of my computer is, and though it could be the hard drives (since lowering the PWM of the fans and pump only helps a little). So I thought I could just turn off the drives (RAID 1) for a short time and see (hear) if there's a big difference in noise levels.

But it turns out there doesn't seem to be any possibility to turn off the system hard drive, or at least I couldn't find one after a lot of searching. Does anyone know how I could achieve this? Or how I could do something similar at least?

PS: Maybe there exists a program that can delay writes to the system drive by a few minutes (writing them to RAM or such), so that it will spin down automatically?

Njol
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  • If you turn off your system drive the OS kernel would crash. Why don't you boot to a non-mechanical system drive. You can then not mount the system drive on the mechanical drive, thus allowing you to perform your test, if you so desire. *A non-mechanical drive makes no noise.* – Ramhound Nov 30 '15 at 18:14
  • @Ramhound: That's not entirely true – a HDD can still spin down and become quiet while remaining connected to the bus. The "Power" control panel has had a spindown timeout [ever since Windows 98](https://books.google.lt/books?id=7eoCec_3FyAC&pg=PA578&lpg=PA578&dq=windows+98+power+%22turn+off+hard+disks%22&source=bl&ots=zy1xd6Jd-n&sig=dCXGOi02MDO0tLg2_6RurA-TEP0&hl=en&sa=X&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=windows%2098%20power%20%22turn%20off%20hard%20disks%22&f=false). – u1686_grawity Nov 30 '15 at 18:15
  • @grawity - The actual system drive though? Sure it can spin down while in low power modes, and non-system drives, can be low powered green devices and be spundown. – Ramhound Nov 30 '15 at 18:19
  • @Ramhound: Yes, the actual system drive. (Most people didn't _have_ more than one drive back then. Most laptops still don't.) A system can work from the memory cache for a while – especially if it's just sitting idle at the desktop. And since the drive is still online, it can be spun up on demand again. – u1686_grawity Nov 30 '15 at 18:20
  • Maybe a more "physical" solution: http://www.amazon.com/Mechanics-Diagnostic-Stethoscope-Sonarscope-Listening/dp/B005GRGR7C – Eddie Dunn Nov 30 '15 at 18:22
  • Why not just unplug their power, and boot from another OS medium (USB or CD, etc.)? – Ƭᴇcʜιᴇ007 Nov 30 '15 at 18:26
  • That is the easiest way, though it does not account for power used by spun-down drive with its electronics still on. – Hennes Nov 30 '15 at 18:44

1 Answers1

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hdparm -y should put a drive in standby mode.

Now HDparm is a tool which is usually shipped with Linux, but there are ports of it for windows.

None of these claim to work with windows 10, though I strongly suspect that the latter one will work. I would love some feedback on that.

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Hennes
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    I just get `HDIO_DRIVE_CMD(identify) failed: Function not implemented` (or the same with HDIO_GET_IDENTITY), probably because of the RAID (the drives aren't listed in the BIOS SATA list either). – Njol Nov 30 '15 at 19:35
  • Ack. I did not consider fake RAID (IRST). I assumed normal software RAID. That leaves only two choices I know off: Disconnect one drive amd boot with a degraded array (assume powering down two drives would cause twice an as big reduction). Or programming the drives themselves to spin down regarless of OS (hdparm -S somelowvaluehere). Though to configure the drives you would need to boot without the RAID else you get the same error with -S as with -y – Hennes Nov 30 '15 at 20:00
  • I'm not sure why I didn't think of this earlier, but disabling RAID in the BIOS allowed me to use hdparm to spin the drives down. I bought an SSD in the meantime though so not sure if it would have worked as well if I actually booted from one of those HDDs. – Njol Feb 07 '16 at 18:21