Q&A: How can I prevent my PC’s hard drive from shutting down while the computer is still on?

Question from Amber:  After my computer has been sitting idle for about half an hour the hard drive just shuts down.

When I get back on the computer and press a key or move my mouse I can hear the drive starting back up again and I have to wait several seconds before I can do anything.

This is extremely irritating. I don’t mind the hard drive shutting down when the computer goes to sleep but I want it to remain active while the computer is up and running.

How can I fix this? My computer is an Acer All-In-One with Windows 10.

Rick’s answer:  Amber, hard disk auto-shutdown is a power saving feature of Windows 10, and it’s there for obvious reasons.

That being said, I don’t like my hard drive shutting down before my computer goes to sleep either.

I have totally disabled hard drive auto-shutdown on my Windows machines. You can do the same on yours by following the steps below:

1 – Press the Windows+S key combination to open a “Search” box.

2 – Type the word power into the Search box, then select Edit power plan from the list of search results.

3 – Click the Change advanced power settings link.

4 – Click on the plus sign (+) beside “Hard disk” to expand that section.

5 – Click on the number in the box beside “Setting (minutes)”, then use the down arrow to scroll down and select Never.

6 – Click Apply, then click OK.

That’s all there is to it. Your computer’s hard drive should now keep whizzing along until the machine either goes to sleep or is powered down.

I hope this helps, Amber. Good luck!

Bonus tip #1: This post explains how to sign into your Windows 10 PC with your fingerprint.

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