How to let hard drive sleep in RAID1 configuration?
- by Al Kepp
Normally in Windows 7 a hard drive stops spinning when it is not used for a longer while. This can be configured in Windows and I use it on computers which are turned on 24/7 but not used much often. My problem is on a computer with Intel X79 chipset with an integrated RAID controller. There is Windows 7 installed on an SSD drive, and there is RAID1 array with two SATA HDD drives for data. Those SATA drives aren't used much so I'd like to let them sleep (i.e stop spinning). But they ignore settings in Windows. How to let them sleep when using RAID1? It seems to me that those drives are "unstoppable", they are spinning 24/7 even when they aren't used at all. Maybe they would behave normally if I used Windows-based software RAID, but I use hardware RAID controller. Is there a way to let them stop spinning and sleep after for example 3 or 5 hours of inactivity (i.e. the same way as they would behave in Windows without RAID)?