Question does a hard drive spin when it is unmounted?

[jammer42777]

Hello,
I am considering putting my storage drives in my main rig.
However, the drives are formatted in ext4 and I have no intention of using them in windows.
(I use a dual boot windows and linux)
My question is if a drive or file system is not mounted in windows is that drive Not spinning?
I don't want the drive to be in use when I don't need it.

 

[Viking2121]

Yes they will spin up when windows seeks for devices and drives or any software that looks for drives even if its unreadable by windows, They will still spin down after a while, but the moment you open Computer, they will spin up.

Years ago when I had backup drive in my computer I used a double pole switch on a molex to sata connector, connected it to the drive, One side of the switch controlled the 12v and the other side controlled the 5v, and I enabled hot swap in the bios for that sata port and ran the switch to the back of the computer by the rear fan, case had a hole perfect for it, I used black wire so it wouldn't stick out.

When I wanted to access the drive, I could flip the switch on, and the drive would spin up and windows would eventually see it and use it, once I was done I could safely remove it like a flash drive and flip the switch off, it wouldn't spin up at all in windows as the only wires connected was just the ground wires.

That was old days, I don't do that anymore, but something like that could be helpful for something like this, especially if its a linux drive you don't need it to power on all the time when you are in windows, you do have to understand how electric and the wires work though, simply switching just the 12v wire, the drive will still get 5v power so you'd need to switch both 12v (Yellow) and 5v (Red) at the same time, and you really don't want to put a switch on the ground (black wires) side.

Also another way you could do this, have an external HDD that has a switch, hook it up to USB 3, and just boot from the drive via USB for linux, Windows don't like to run from USB. When you want to boot to windows, shut off the external HDD, Linux is fine with USB and USB 3 is pretty quick and an HDD shouldn't max out a USB 3 port, a sata SSD will, but it will still be plenty fast.

Good Luck!

 

[jammer42777]

Right now I have my mechanical drives in a hard drive enclosure using usb C.

Every 3 months I want to back up the files to an external usb 3 hard drive.
Is that do able as far as transfer speeds?:

 

[USAFRet]

Right now I have my mechanical drives in a hard drive enclosure using usb C.

Every 3 months I want to back up the files to an external usb 3 hard drive.
Is that do able as far as transfer speeds?:

Depends on the amount of data.

A couple hundred GB, or a few dozen TB.

But, let it run overnight. Computer works while you sleep.

 

[jammer42777]

about 4 terabytes, in linux

 

[USAFRet]

about 4 terabytes, in linux

So let it run overnight.
Done.

 

[Ralston18]

Curious: "every three months"?

That is a very long time.

I trust that there are interim and much more frequent backups being made as well - correct?

 

[jammer42777]

Curious: "every three months"?

That is a very long time.

I trust that there are interim and much more frequent backups being made as well - correct?

Not quite. I keep the backup drive atmy bank

 

[Ralston18]

As a general IT observation, 3 months is too far between "backups" unless losing (worst case) three months of work and data is acceptable. That is your call.

There should be multiple, verified backups in different locations.

And keeping the drive in a Safe Deposit box (as I understand your post) is well and good.

Caveat being someone else has ready access to the box and the contents if you are deceased or incpacitated.

That is a matter to be addressed via the bank and/or a lawyer.

Immediate concern being a false sense of security....

Mr. Murphy loves that.