Thinkpads Forum

I just moved from a T60p to a T61 with the Middleton bios.

I immediately noticed that my 1TB Western Digital HDD in the ultrabay is spinning down after about 20 seconds of idle time. This causes unnecessary spin up and spin down cycles, not to mention delay when accessing data from that drive.

No matter what settings I chose in Windows power management (never sleep, never spin down) for both battery and plugged in scenarios, nothing changes. The drive continues to go to sleep.

I checked with Western Digital and they said it is definitely caused by Windows or in the bios.

Does anyone know if the Middleton bios has any setting that could impact this issue, or any ideas for how to get the power management to let the drive keep spinning for at least 10 minutes?

Modify the actual power management settings in the drive itself. If you set it to maximum noise/performance it should block out the system spinning the drive down.

You can also try changing the optical drive performance setting in Power Manager to maximum performance. If not using power manager, install it, and enjoy the extra controls that are granted. Windows power management is a very blunt tool in comparison.

You can also edit the setting in device manager, power management, and uncheck the option to allow the system to save power by shutting this device off.

Note: Many modern drives do the excessive spin down to save on power, lower noise, and to protect data. I had to modify the drives power settings on a WD Black 500GB for my Xbox 360, because it was doing the same thing.