PC makes shutdown sound

Discussion in 'Hardware' started by Sailor, May 23, 2014.

  1. Sailor

    Sailor First Sergeant

    I suspect this is a hard drive idling. I have Win8.1 installed on one HD and opensuse on another HD. When I am using the Win8.1, sometimes I get a hissing sound from the case. The sound that the hardware makes when I shutdown the system, except there is no shutdown, no error, no flickering of the screen.

    I see a lot of threads on other forums suggesting that this is a PSU issue. I hope that my brand new Corsair is not to blame. The last reply on this page suggests that it is the secondary drive shutting down to conserve energy. I would be perfectly fine with that but is there any case that going on-off it damages the drive? Should I cut the power to the drive completely?
     
    Sailor, May 23, 2014
    #1
  2. DavidGP

    DavidGP MajorGeeks Forum Administrator - Grand Pooh-Bah Staff Member

    HI Sailor, long time not chat.

    I would check in the power options and set the HDDs to always on (especially if a desktop PC) and location is Control Panel\Hardware and Sound\Power Options\Edit Plan Settings

    Then scroll down the list to Hard Drives and set to always on > apply and reboot and test.
     
    DavidGP, May 24, 2014
    #2
  3. Sailor

    Sailor First Sergeant

    Hi David, thanks for the reply. In the plan settings I only get an option to set minutes before the HD is turned off. There is no option for "never". Since I am not using the second drive at all when I am on 8.1, would it be better to keep it always off, to preserve it? The disk is about 8 years old now.
     
    Sailor, May 24, 2014
    #3
  4. DavidGP

    DavidGP MajorGeeks Forum Administrator - Grand Pooh-Bah Staff Member

    Hi

    I'm an idiot, should have looked at my setting more closely and in that option set the time in minutes to 0

    But if you are ok with the audable noise then allowing the drive to power off when not used is reasonable, I just fear that at times a stop/start of hardware can put it under some strain and more likely to fail, that said HDDs are quite resilient these days and if they are likely to fail they will do, even with as much care as we can give them.

    So backup of data on your HDDs is paramount, be that Cloud Storage, spare external HDD or internal HDD etc, always have duplicates of your important data, I keep at least 3 copies of important stuff on, Cloud, large HDD and old HDDs that are stored and not hooked up to my PC unless needed.
     
    DavidGP, May 24, 2014
    #4
  5. Sailor

    Sailor First Sergeant

    Recently when I was trying to configure this dual boot, I accidentally cleaned my backup... Look at the bright side, I got rid of 5 years of junk that I was supposed to organise and label properly. I'm a new man!!!

    So value 0 will keep the disk running at all times? Which setting will deactivate it completely? I need a win8.1 setting, not a BIOS one because half the times I boot from that drive and leave the first one unused.

    Anyway, the disk is a WD so I have high hopes for its longevity. The online test provided through SpeedFan returned this report. How troubled should I be with those attributes?
     
    Sailor, May 24, 2014
    #5
  6. DavidGP

    DavidGP MajorGeeks Forum Administrator - Grand Pooh-Bah Staff Member

    HI

    Yes 0 will keep it running all the time, but deactivate completely is not a Power option in that setting list, to disable, I would possibly look at Device Manager and find the drive in Disk Drives branch and choose "disable" then when you need it just "enable"

    Off-hand I cannot think of a free app that disables drives per-say so Dev Mgr is my best thought on a Sunday! ;)

    And no on your Speedfan report as your still in the green by a long margin on anything to do with errors and potential faults.
     
    DavidGP, May 25, 2014
    #6

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