My AMD 939 system crashes when there is no harddisk activity. Apparently because the disk is spinning down and the Bios can’t handle it. When I’m downloading or reading a video the PC is ultra stable.
WD support told to buy a new motherboard, but I’m not ready for that for the moment.
I saw some solutions to create a VBA or C program that acesses the disk every 10 minutes, but I’m surprised there isn’t a more stable solution, like a parameter to change or at least an official program for this.
You may be able to keep the drive from sleeping if you use a utility like Crystal Disk. But it is a workaround only. Newer WD drives are “Greener” and sleeps often as it can. They don’t honor BIOS or ACPI command set on Windows OS. These drives will not live long if you kept them spinning without all essential sleep. Instead of changing motherboard as instructed, why don’t you look for a drive that honors Windows management settings?
Found another entry recommending to disable Windows write cache buffer flushing (write cache being on) in the device manager options for the hard drive. It seems to work. That seeme like a break through cuz there ar a lot of entries about these spin down problems.
How can I figure if a drive honors Windows management settings?
