manualy power off a spare hard drive?

i have 2 hard drives in my computer. one 40 gig drive that has my XP
install, and one 250 gig drive that has my vista install, as well as all my
music/movies...

in the power management, i have it set so after 20 minutes of inactivity the
hard drives turn off. i would like the 40 gig drive to stay off the entire
time i am in vista (it is extremely loud). sometimes it will turn on for no
reason, then stay on for 20 minutes.

is there a way to just disable that hard drive while i am running vista, so
that it stays off all the time?

another question, will the hard drive that is running vista ever turn off
because of being "inactive"? (say the comp was idle for a period of time
with no programs runnnig)

Personally I'd unplug the power lead from a noisy drive I wasn't going to use
for quite a while. A hard drive will not turn off 'cos it is inactive. It
stays on unless told otherwise or it overheats.

"kcthomas" wrote:

> i have 2 hard drives in my computer. one 40 gig drive that has my XP
> install, and one 250 gig drive that has my vista install, as well as all my
> music/movies...
>
> in the power management, i have it set so after 20 minutes of inactivity the
> hard drives turn off. i would like the 40 gig drive to stay off the entire
> time i am in vista (it is extremely loud). sometimes it will turn on for no
> reason, then stay on for 20 minutes.
>
> is there a way to just disable that hard drive while i am running vista, so
> that it stays off all the time?
>
> another question, will the hard drive that is running vista ever turn off
> because of being "inactive"? (say the comp was idle for a period of time
> with no programs runnnig)

well i am dual booting, my XP install is on the spare drive, so i want to
leave it plugged in case i have to get back to XP.

"Spirefm" wrote:

> Personally I'd unplug the power lead from a noisy drive I wasn't going to use
> for quite a while. A hard drive will not turn off 'cos it is inactive. It
> stays on unless told otherwise or it overheats.
>

anybody else? i dont want to unplug my spare HD cause it is actually the
master drive and i dont want to mess with the setup (not sure how windows set
up my boot)

i just want it to stay powered down when i am in windows vista. It powers
down after 10 minutes, but then sometimes for no reason at all it powers back
up. what kind of things would power it back up and can i disable them?