w520, hard drives spinning down seemingly randomly

[besonen]

hi all,

- w520, i7-2720QM (quad core)
- bios version: 8BET50WW (1.30)
- two western digital WD5000BEVT (500gb) drives in a raid 1 configuration
- intel raid driver version: 10.1.0.1008
- win 7 pro sp1 64-bit

when i put my ear to the w520 it sounds like each hard drive is spinning down at varying intervals (anywhere from 5 - 60 seconds). i can hear the drive spin down and then it spins back up.

when i boot the w520 with a different os via a usb optical drive i do not hear the hard drives spinning down.

does anyone else hear a frequent spin down and spin up sound? if so, doesn't this seem odd? if not, does anyone have any suggestions for how to approach understanding this phenomena? i've checked the windows event logs and there's no obvious problem being reported


thanks,
david

[mgo]

Have you checked Power Options/Advanced to see when the settings tell the drives to stop? One can set those the any number of time outs. My cooling fan spins up and and down, too. Sometimes it's hard to tell if the sound is the fan or the hard drive.