Green Harddrive question

[cavedog]

I bought the Seagate 2TB Green Harddrive.

I bought it mainly for storage so the harddrive only idles most of the time as a slave since no games/programs is installed on it, so it basically just idles.

Every time I access the harddrive the window like hangs and it sounds like the harddrive is starting up. After that sound [like the rpm is increasing spinning faster and faster] has finished it goes into the drive and works fine and its quite fast.

Is that why its called a green harddrive? When not in use it shuts down or go to idle.

 

[D.B.Cooper]

Was it this drive? http://www.take2.co.za/electronics-seagate-barracuda-green-2tb-hdd-5900rpm-sata-3-6gb-s-8952012.html

Check your power options and see if the profile you're using is set to turn drives off after a certain period of idleness. If it is you might want to change it to never turn your drives off if the system delay while it spins the drive up bothers you.

Edit: Forgot to mention, some green drives spin slower after a certain period of idleness. This is separate from your power settings and I don't think you can usually change this behaviour since it's in the drive's firmware. Others simply spin at a lower rpm than usual.

 

[SouthBit]

Your Seagate Green drive is so called because it spins at 5900rpm therefore using less power, and the manufacturing process uses less dangerous chemicals.

As DB Cooper said, it's most likely an OS setting that spins the drive down after it's not been used for a while. In my opinion this actually puts more wear and tear on the drive, as whilst in use the heads are flying on a thin layer of air and not touching the platters and thermal cycling doesn't come into play. Perhaps check your power management settings if you want to disable it.

The other setting it could be is Advanced Power Management (APM) and relates to the drive itself. Here's a link with some info about it:
http://forums.seagate.com/t5/Barrac...2-spins-down-after-a-while-I-think/td-p/76744

 

[NomNom]

I bought the Seagate 2TB Green Harddrive.

I bought it mainly for storage so the harddrive only idles most of the time as a slave since no games/programs is installed on it, so it basically just idles.

Every time I access the harddrive the window like hangs and it sounds like the harddrive is starting up. After that sound [like the rpm is increasing spinning faster and faster] has finished it goes into the drive and works fine and its quite fast.

Is that why its called a green harddrive? When not in use it shuts down or go to idle.

Cause your windows power settings tell windows to switch off the drive after a certain amount of time that you are not using it.

If you don't want your Pc to "freeze" when accessing the drive, change the time to 0mins.

 

[cavedog]

Cause your windows power settings tell windows to switch off the drive after a certain amount of time that you are not using it.

If you don't want your Pc to "freeze" when accessing the drive, change the time to 0mins.

Ohh ok found it. Sigh. I moved it to max performance to prevent this but it still had it on 20min. Thanks.

 

[Hmullie]

Your Seagate Green drive is so called because it spins at 5900rpm therefore using less power, and the manufacturing process uses less dangerous chemicals.

As DB Cooper said, it's most likely an OS setting that spins the drive down after it's not been used for a while. In my opinion this actually puts more wear and tear on the drive, as whilst in use the heads are flying on a thin layer of air and not touching the platters and thermal cycling doesn't come into play. Perhaps check your power management settings if you want to disable it.

The other setting it could be is Advanced Power Management (APM) and relates to the drive itself. Here's a link with some info about it:
http://forums.seagate.com/t5/Barrac...2-spins-down-after-a-while-I-think/td-p/76744

Actually some drives like the samsung eco green has variable rpm it is in fact a 7200 rpm drive when not used it spins at 5200 rpm and restore spin speed when used.

 

[Roger.Wilco]

Cause your windows power settings tell windows to switch off the drive after a certain amount of time that you are not using it.

Not always the case with these green drives. The WD green drives has its own settings, doesn't matter what you tell Windows to do, it will still go into sleep mode. I used a utility called wdidle3 (I think) to check what the settings on mine was. It was set to go into sleep mode after less than 10 seconds of inactivity. I disabled those settings completely, so that it can run of the Windows power settings now. Not sure if it's the same for Seagate drives though.

 

[SouthBit]

Actually some drives like the samsung eco green has variable rpm it is in fact a 7200 rpm drive when not used it spins at 5200 rpm and restore spin speed when used.

I'm not sure which Samsung Ecogreen model you are reffering to, but the current F4 series rotates at 5,400rpm. As far as I know the Ecogreen drives do not spin at 7,200 and do not vary their speed.
Every manufacturer has a different take on 'Green'. Samsung run at 5,400, some Seagates run at 5,900, some WDs will park the heads to reduce aerodynamic drag and employ some other tactics.

Not always the case with these green drives. The WD green drives has its own settings, doesn't matter what you tell Windows to do, it will still go into sleep mode. I used a utility called wdidle3 (I think) to check what the settings on mine was. It was set to go into sleep mode after less than 10 seconds of inactivity. I disabled those settings completely, so that it can run of the Windows power settings now. Not sure if it's the same for Seagate drives though.

Some of the WD Greens will also park their heads when not in use. This is controversial though, as all the head loading and unloading puts a lot more wear and tear on the heads themselves.

On my machines that spend a lot of time switched on I prefer to set the drives to stay on the entire time the machine is powered up, in my opinion it produces the least wear on the HDDs. In the same way a car endures 95% of its wear when it's warming up, a similar principal applies to a HDD. The heads having to move off the parking area, all the components heating up (thermal cycling) etc.

 

[killadoob]

I have a 7200 rpm and my power settings are correct, still spin up and goes to work sadly. The worse i had it was when the 7200rpm was my windows drive and if i left it for 20 odd minutes without use it would take a second or two spin up.