Question from Amber: After my Windows computer has been sitting idle for a few minutes 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?
Rick’s answer: Amber, hard disk auto-shutdown is a power saving feature of Windows, 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 always totally disabled hard drive auto-shutdown on my Windows machines. You can do the same on yours. This short video shows how, step-by-step:
Note: You can watch this video at full screen by clicking the little “square” icon in the lower-right corner of the video after it begins playing.
If you prefer following written instructions, here you go:
1 – Click the Start button and type the words edit power plan into the Search box.
2 – 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 plus sign (+) beside “Turn off hard disk after” to open that setting.
6 – If your PC is a desktop machine change this setting to Never.
If it’s a laptop change both the “On battery” and “Plugged in” settings to Never.
7 – 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, is placed into Hibernate mode or is simply powered down.
I hope this helps, Amber. Good luck!