[SOLVED] Old HDD health, it spins up even though I've removed the drive letter

[HerbertSherbet]

I have a HDD that might be 8 years old from a Windows 7 computer (I'm on Windows 10 version 1909 now). I don't actually want to store things on it or do a backup but rather have it readily accessible if I want to pull an old file from it once a month. It has very little that I actually care about on it but I still need to sift through it to make sure I save any old file I want to keep. I plugged it in to my current machine for ease of access since it was sitting unused in an older machine that had no power. In an effort to keep it from being used by my machine I removed the drive letter so that programs would be unable to access it until I specifically enabled it again. Nevertheless it still spins to life randomly. I have an SSD and quiet fans so I can tell when it turns on.

My question is twofold. I want to check the health of this old 1TB HDD and I want to know if there's something more I can do to protect it. I don't want a videogame program like Easy Anti-Cheat to scour it or for Windows Defender to scan it. I want it to be left alone until I'm ready to look through it and find any meat on the bone that I want to copy over to my SSD.

Without checking I think it says it has 106GB free if that's important.

 

[Darkbreeze]

If it's connected, it will spin up, if it is designed to do so. If it is a low power model, it might idle when it's not in use but it will still spin up initially when the system powers on and it will still be seen by the system as long as it is connected, regardless of whether it has any partitions on it or not and regardless of whether a drive letter has been assigned to any of those partitions, or not. The only way it won't be, is to disconnect it.

For what you want to do, I'd recommend that you simply get an external USB enclosure, put it in that, and only connect it when you want to pull something off it or look through it. And, you can exclude it from Windows defender scans IN the windows defender real time scanning advanced options. Simply navigate to PC settings on the start menu, then select Update and security, click on the Windows security link on the left hand side, click on Virus and threat protection, click on "manage settings" under "Virus and threat protection settings", scroll down and click on Add or Remove exclusions under the exclusions section, click on Add an exclusion, click on folder and then select the root folder for the drive you don't want Windows defender to bother. You will however need the partition to have a drive letter in order to tell Windows defender not to bother it, which of course you will have if you have put it in an enclosure and assigned it a drive letter in order to gain access to it.

 

[HerbertSherbet]

Well that's good to know. Right now I don't see myself getting an external hard drive enclosure so I'll give it back the drive letter and tell Windows Defender to leave it alone. It should be fine. I just don't want a program to actually use it for something is all.

Do you have any suggestions of what to use to check the health of the drive? I haven't used most of the utilities I see recommended such as CrystalDiskInfo.

 

[mdd1963]

CrystalDiskInfo is a good one, gives most abnormal results highlighted in Yellow/Caution, etc.....; CrystalDiskMark us used for doing basic read/write tests to let you know if the drive is performing roughly as it should for a SATA II/III or NVME spec drive...)most look at the sequential reads/writes which should be in a certain ballpark, depending on the age of the chipset and drive (Old drives are SATAII, and the numbers will naturally be lower than for SATAIII spec drives)

GsmartControl is another, allows SHort/Long read/write tests on drive in question...

 

[Darkbreeze]

What brand is the drive? Not that it really matters, but for spinning drives I usually like to recommend the heath utility from that manufacturer.

 

[HerbertSherbet]

What brand is the drive? Not that it really matters, but for spinning drives I usually like to recommend the heath utility from that manufacturer.

It's a Seagate, Barracuda, 7200.12, 1TB.
The date code shows that the drive was made in August or September 2011.

 

[Darkbreeze]

So, I would personally recommend that you download Seatools for windows.

Install it. Run it. Run the Short DST (Drive self test) and the standard long/long generic test as well. The Short self test won't take long. The long generic will take probably several hours. That should give you a pretty good idea, combined with the S.M.A.R.T test results from any utility, about the drive health and remaining lifespan. To be honest though, it's probably really time to start thinking about retiring that drive really soon unless it has mostly just gone unused in which case it could still have a fair bit of life left in it.

I would certainly not leave anything important on it for any length of time to pick and choose off of it if there is data on it you might want and don't have elsewhere. I'd go through and get everything you might want to keep off of it right away rather than piecemeal.