Under Windows 10, I want my drive to spin down when its not being directly used by me so its quiet , even if i’m still multitasking doing other things. Is this possible and reliable? I once tried windows power settings on a WD blue drive connected over sata cable, but no matter what I tried it simply didn’t power down to sleep and just kept spinning. I also have a program called Victoria which has some WD idle timer feature. I don’t yet have the drive, just want to confirm its possible to sleep it first before buying them.
If the motherboard BIOS supports “sata devslp” (Device Sleep mode) it can be switched to enabled.
Then HDD, if it supports it, will switch to sleep mode, park the heads and stop completely, remaining in standby mode. Waking up usually takes a few seconds.
In Windows 10, hard drives can spin down when idle, but it depends on the drive and system activity. Some WD drives may ignore Windows power settings, and background apps or system tasks can keep the drive active. Tools like Victoria or CrystalDiskInfo can help by setting the drive’s sleep timer directly. It can work, but not all drives support it reliably.
