# What keeps spinning up my secondary HDD? [Windows 8.1]



## Satanas (May 6, 2010)

Hello,

I think my setup is fairly common: I am running on an SSD which has my OS (Windows 8.1 Pro x64), games and applications, and I have an internal mass storage HDD for videos, music, etc. that I rarely access. I have my HDD set to spin down after 20 minutes of idleness, which it does with no problem.
The issue is that multiple times a day (perhaps once every hour or so, but it's not regular) the HDD will spin up without me accessing it, even if I'm on my bed and away from the computer. This particular drive is a Seagate 4TB 5900rpm, and it has a rather annoying/audible buzzy spinup, so I'd rather it only spinup when I am using it.

Indexing is disabled on the drive, system restore is disabled on it and there is no swapfile on it either. Windows was installed with the drive initially detached so no system crucial files are on there either.

I've tried using Sysinternals Process Monitor to monitor processes accessing files on the E:\ drive exclusively, yet nothing is logged at the times of spinup. I've similarly had no luck catching any process writing to E:\ in Resource Monitor at times of spinup.

I'm wondering if there is anything else I can try, or if this is simply an inevitable thing in Windows 8.1? (e.g., some system service like System Maintenance regularly spins up all attached drives). If anyone could shed some light here, that'd be fantastic.


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## Vizuliz (May 22, 2015)

Have you checked Event Viewer for an event that coincides with the exact time that the disk spins up.

Viz


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## Satanas (May 6, 2010)

Took a look at Administrative Events, System and Application events in the event viewer corresponding to the last two spinups, I do not see anything around either of those times.

Does the Windows automatic maintenance cause this behaviour? It seems to run fairly frequently.


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## Panther063 (Jul 13, 2009)

I'm wondering if the Hard Drives firmware has it spin up occasionally for some reason.
Try disconnecting the SATA data cable and leave the power connected, that will show if it is the firmware.


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## Vizuliz (May 22, 2015)

If all else fails to resolve the problem then another option would be to purchase a Docking Station ($25 to $50), remove the noisy HDD and run it from the Docking Station only when you want to.

As an added bonus the Docking Station is a great device for Backups and System Images.

Viz


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## Satanas (May 6, 2010)

Hey guys,

So even _with _the SATA cable still connected, if I simply turn the drive "Offline" in Disk Management, it will not spin up ever. Only when it is an active Windows drive. While constantly turning it offline/online does work, it is obviously not an optimal solution as it loses a good bit of convenience.

One thing I have noticed is that the secondary HDD does have the following folders on it:
$Recycle.Bin
msdownld.tmp
System Volume Information

(This is despite both indexing AND system restore being disabled on that drive). Additionally, manually running a Windows Update or updating a program like MS Office causes the drive to spin up. So I'm wondering if Windows simply makes use of this drive randomly while doing background things and that's causing the spinup? It does seem to run maintenance pretty often. Granted, after a lot of these spinups nothing is actually written to the drive (Windows Update and the random spinups included).

Any other ideas?


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## Satanas (May 6, 2010)

UPDATE

Sorry, I was wrong. Even with the disk OFFLINE in disk management, it still spins up. I'm not sure how I didn't notice the noise earlier. Do you think firmware is the probable cause? Or should I still go ahead and try the SATA disconnection first?

The disk is this one:
Seagate Desktop HDD.15 ST4000DM000 4TB 5900 RPM 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive Bare Drive - Newegg.ca


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