HDD won't spin down/sleep in Windows 10

Hello,

Thank you for posting on Microsoft Community. We will assist you in resolving the issue.

You may be facing this issue due to the unallocated time for the HDD to go to sleep from the sleep settings.

Follow the steps below to allocate the timing for the HDD to go to sleep from Power options and check if the issue is resolved.

1. Press Windows logo key on the keyboard, type Power Options and select the top most search result.

2. Click on Change when the computer sleeps option from the left side panel of the window and click on Change advanced power settings.

3. Expand Hard disk > Turn off hard disk after and set a time of your choice from the drop down bar.

4. Click on Apply and OK after setting the time.

5. Close the window and check if the changes are effective.

Write back to us with the status of the issue on the same post for further assistance. Your reply is most important for us to ensure we assist you accordingly.

Thank you.

Thank you for the above.

That is precisely what I have done, set it to 5 mins but it seems like that doesn't work.

I'm thinking there might be something still accessing the drive preventing it from spinning down.

Is there a way I can check if any background application/service is accessing the drive?

Hi,

I have exactly the same problem after upgrading to Win10 Pro. I have couple of HDD's, power plan setup - turn off HDD after 15 minutes and it doesn't do anything, HDD's are still on. With Win7 I didn't have this problem, HDD's turned off OK. I have checked Resource Monitor and nothing is going on with secondary HDD's, no activity.

I do have indexing service turned off.

MB Asus Z97 Pro Wi-Fi - latest drivers, Intel AHCI SATA driver

HDD (SATA3) SSD Samsung EVO 840

HDD (SATA2) -  WDC WD20EARS, WDC WD15EADS, ST3500320AS

I searched internet, found bunch of topics related to this problem, but no universal solution. Can you help?

Thank you in advance.

Still haven't been able to find a way to fix this within the OS.

Worked fine on Win 8.1

I installed this app http://hddscan.com which actually sets the timers correctly but every time you sleep the PC the changes are lost so not too useful, good for testing.

This seems to be because of that large Win 10 update.

Worked fine before that also.

Might try a clean install to see if that makes any difference next.

I to have the same problem.

Win 10

Asus z170-a

SSD  - Samsung evo 850 for OS

HDD 2x WD Blue 1tb for Games, storage etc.

Latest drivers.

HDD's set to power down after 15 to no effect.

This actually made me get rid of my 2TB HDD and replaced with 1TB SSD.

Nice and quiet now.

Too bad such a simple feature could not be implemented properly into Windows 10.

Get this, once I put the 2TB into a USB enclosure it goes to sleep just fine now.

I've been doing some digging into this. If you are running an Intel system that uses Intel Rapid Storage Technology (Intel RST) then please feel free to digest this conveniently locked thread on the Intel forums:

https://communities.intel.com/message/317473#317473

In short the approved Windows 10 drivers from version 14 and above have a bug that prevents the standard HDD spin down in Windows 10 from functioning.

I have an Asus H97M-e motherboard and on the Asus website the official driver is 14.5.0.1081 and this prevents the drives from spinning down.

I have managed to resolve the issue on my machine by uninstalling Intel Rapid Storage Technology package from 'add remove programs' which also removes the driver. Windows will then install a default MS AHCI driver which will actually work fine and resolve the issue. But as suggested on the Intel forum by another user I have installed RST driver version 13.6.0.1002 which is available from the Intel website here:

https://downloadcenter.intel.com/download/24779/Intel-Rapid-Storage-Technology-Intel-RST-RAID-Driver

It is worth installing the earlier driver (Designed for Win 8.1 and below) as this allows the additional power saving features of the chipset.