Controling Secondary Drives

flyoffacliff

Honorable
Jul 18, 2012
98
0
10,640
I have a SSD with windows, and a secondary HDD, I don't use the HDD often, and I have Windows set to spin it down after 1 minute, but the drive has a 3 minute minimum spin-time delay built in. Windows does not do a very good job keeping it spun down, and various programs will often make it spin up for no reason., which I know is not good for the drive. I installed "Hotswap! 6.1", and tried ejecting the drive, and the "Microsoft Storage" thing that the drive is setup through. Neither would eject and both gave errors saying a system restart was needed. I went into the UEFI bios and enabled hotswap for the SATA port that the drive is connected to. I still can't eject the actual drive, but I can eject the "Microsoft Storage" thing, which prevents Windows from using the drive. It does not appear in device manager or "My Computer". But it does appear in "devices and printers". After ejecting, the drive is unusable until I reboot, since I can't physically disconnect and reconnect the SATA cable every time I want to use the drive. Is there a way to get it back into Windows without rebooting? How do other Windows users with multiple drives manage this problem? Is there a SATA "switch" product that I can pass the drives power cable through, and mount the switch in a 3.5" or 5.0" bay, or even a rear I/O plate?
 
"how do other windows users with multiple drives manage this problem"

I have SSD, 2 drives in RAID 0, another drive .. and external USB drive. .and a NAS that has 2 drives in RAID1 and is on 24/7
and I "manage the problem" by buying decent quality drives.. make sure they have SMART on... take backups of valuable data I cant afford to lose.. and get on with using the stuff..
Drives are designed to work without your proposed micro management.. and life's too short.. much better things to worry about/ 😉.

Cheers