Mildly O/T. Hard drive power down

Is there a software way to force a drive to power down?

XP powers down drives after x amount of time (Control Panel - Power
Options). I have mine set to 20 minutes. I have 1 internal hard disk where I
store all my admin files (patches, software installs, drivers etc) and
backup files. I only use the drive every now and again (maybe once a day),
but would like to turn it off when finished. I can't be bothered spending
time and money on an external casing.

i suggest u to have a look on some software blogs or zones,maybe there
u can find a way.
http://www.xowow.com

GT wrote:
Is there a software way to force a drive to power down?

XP powers down drives after x amount of time (Control Panel - Power
Options). I have mine set to 20 minutes. I have 1 internal hard disk where I
store all my admin files (patches, software installs, drivers etc) and
backup files. I only use the drive every now and again (maybe once a day),
but would like to turn it off when finished. I can't be bothered spending
time and money on an external casing.



I found some options in the ATA/ATAPI specs, but I don't know
exactly how you send any of the commands to the drive (manually).
Hitachi has a "Feature Tool" for changing some things on a
drive, but I don't see this kind of thing mentioned. It could
be that the OS actually twiddles this stuff, and utilities
don't bother "competing" with the OS for control.

*******
You can get ATA/ATAPI specs here. Password is listed on the first link.

http://www.t13.org/FTPSite/Default.aspx

ftp://ftp.t13.org/docs2002/d1532v1r1a-ATA-ATAPI-7.pdf (a volume 1)
ftp://ftp.t13.org/docs2002/d1532v2r1a-ATA-ATAPI-7.pdf (a volume 2)

PDF page 158 of Volume 1, Table 18, has "Standby Timer" values.

PDF page 29 of Volume 1, defines "Power Management feature set".

- A Standby timer
- CHECK POWER MODE command
- IDLE command
- IDLE IMMEDIATE command
- SLEEP command
- STANDBY command
- STANDBY IMMEDIATE command

The disk can be commanded to do many things. The operating system can
load many of these features, when the drivers first initialize the drive.
*******

Paul