Question: I have a number of different drives that I use for different purposes but I only use two of them frequently.I would like for the others to enter sleep mode when not in use, but never my main two.
Is there any way to edit power saving settings for individual drives?
Answer: Yes, it is possible to use individual idle times for each hard drive. You need to set the shortest idle time that should be used via the advanced power settings GUI. Then set individual longer idle times for each hard disk instance via registry, by setting the MinimumIdleTimeoutInMS key. This registry key sets the lower limit for the idle timer of the respective disk instance. So setting a value higher than the value used in the advanced power settings GUI will effectively keep the disk turned on for a longer time as it is configured in the GUI.
Example: You have three disks. Two of them should turn off after 20 minutes, and the third one after 3 hours:
- DEVICEID is a unique identifier for the disk model