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KEEP DRIVE SPINNING ALL THE TIME INSTALL
I started with many Microsoft processes that grovel hard drives turned off, including having nothing in the Music library, Distributed Link Tracking Client turned off, etc, things I routinely do when I install Windows. There are too many random spin-up delays, not enough quietness benefit, and there's the nagging concern about wear and tear. After about 8 months, I concluded I don't believe in sleeping hard drives on a primary PC at least. I found that Windows loves to spin up hard drives, even my two purely data drives. I was curious enough to track the start/stop cycles in a spreadsheet by using the SMART parameters, and I was able to distinguish start/stop due to system sleep (call it "Type 1") from just the HDs sleeping (Type 2). I kept two 2 TB green drives for Recorded TV, music, large downloads, etc, and I decided to try enabling sleep on them to reduce noise even further for my quiet PC, which is my main PC as well as my HTPC. I never slept the hard drives until about a year ago when I got an SSD and put the majority of my working files on it in addition to the OS. View topic - Turn Off Hard Disk - Good or Bad Idea?
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This reminds me, I wrote the following back in 2012, which was a recounting of a long experiment I did regarding HD sleep. Then I'd use a second PC or NAS if I needed more storage. If ultimate quietness is the goal, I'd replace the other two drives with a single larger drive, which will eliminate any resonance multiple drives may exhibit, and I'd disable sleep for the single remaining HD.
KEEP DRIVE SPINNING ALL THE TIME UPGRADE
That will remove one HD from the equation, and it may be the most significant speed upgrade you'll ever make. Try lengthening it, and consider replacing your boot drive with an SSD. There are many things that cause drives to spin up for no apparent reason, but if it's happening "every three minutes", your spin down time must be too short. there is only one speed below "Full Speed", and that is, "Off", and this includes the WD Green Drives, despite the confusing "IntelliPower" terminology they use. FWIW, ordinary hard drives only operate at one speed, i.e.
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