# Achieving silence - how to turn off hard disk on Windows 10? **URL:** https://community.mp3tag.de/t/achieving-silence-how-to-turn-off-hard-disk-on-windows-10/45914 **Category:** Off-Topic **Created:** [July 15, 2019, 8:08pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/achieving-silence-how-to-turn-off-hard-disk-on-windows-10/45914 "2019-07-15T20:08:00Z") **Posts on this page:** 1 **Showing post:** 4
### Author: ![Zerow](https://community.mp3tag.de/user_avatar/community.mp3tag.de/zerow/32/11379_2.png) [@Zerow](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/Zerow) #### Post date: [August 28, 2019, 8:50pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/achieving-silence-how-to-turn-off-hard-disk-on-windows-10/45914/4 "2019-08-28T20:50:19Z")
> [@poster](#): > > I don't understand the problem with the windows-settings. Each harddisk has an individual timer and a harddisk that is actually in use will not go to sleep and a harddisk that is not in use will go to sleep in the time you configured in the power-settings. The key problem is this: Windows since always [i.e. probably since 1995] does not allow to set individual timers for each of the disks; or at least exclude some of them from overall setting And as practice have shown me now, with [at least my version of] Windows 10 the behavior is worst than on Windows 7, as more unknown processes access the drive- thus waking it up unnecessary. I also get often hang ups of system because for some stupid reason a premium software like for example Corel DRAW decides to access the retired disk when I am doing something in / with that software. [And yes I have turned off pagefile.sys and indexing for that drive and it does not host any scratch / temporal files] > [@LyricsLover](#): > > Another simple way: Put your entire PC in a case which is designed to be "silent". I have a silent case. I have a totally passive UPC. I have passive radiators [all radiators are passive, as I already pointed it out in the `Noise Reduction` section of my extremely popular [Unofficial Mp3tag & Audio Efficiency Guide V.1 - #6 by Zerow](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/unofficial-mp3tag-audio-efficiency-guide-v-1/19286/6)] on which I put fans so silent, that I hear them only when I put them next to my ear. So you can imagine how an HDD is a disruptive in such environment As it turns out, I have excellent hearing, and not only for my age. That is what my doctor says after performing multiple test on me. In a matter of fact I always been oversensitive- and now are even more [and that is why an audio specialist M.D. came into my life] > [@LyricsLover](#): > > There are various models. I'm not sure if understand your problem about the noise: Is it because you can't sleep if you hear the HDD? The times where I could sleep without earplugs is long gone. And [long story short] it is very hard to get good ones > [@LyricsLover](#): > > Or why you don't replace your HDD with a silent SSD? In a matter of fact I took that approach as a workaround. Unfortunately I am unable to upgrade from that noisy drive in question, as I need a bigger and quicker one- because I need at least 12TB and I do not happen to have so much money for such HDD. And even if I did have I would still not buy a new one because the prices are like from 2016. As for the SSDs- there are almost no big ones like that and those few that exist costs more than what I earn in a year What I did instead was to take my 10000RPM HDD out from a box that made it practically inaudible and put in it that noisy drive, while replacing the 10000RPM with yet another affordable SSD [which I have a few]. It works for now because it is a summer and a lot of noise is coming from the outside world. But this is an expedient, as when the winter come it will be much quieter in my neighborhood- and that drive in that box is audible to some extent even now. [Plus there is the problem of those often hang ups] ` ` Ans so I will have to return in a few weeks to this topic and to the quest of finding a way to turn off a drive for good, with some script / shortcut --- _[View the full topic](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/achieving-silence-how-to-turn-off-hard-disk-on-windows-10/45914)._