[kenancy]

I have a Win7 system that works fine, except, for whatever reason, Win7 constantly feels the need to wake up my sleeping secondary HDD (Drive D:) at any given time, for no reason.

I click on a photo on my SSD drive, Win7 wants to wake up my HDD. I click on the START button, Win7 wants to wake up my HDD. I want to click on a browser tab, Win7 wants to wake up my HDD. Etc ,etc.

I have the HDD set to go to sleep (spin down) after one minute because I DO NOT need to access 98% of the time, so once it has spun down, ideally, it should STAY down unless I actually go to Explorer or Computer and actually try to access the drive. The only thing I have it for is photos and videos, like a storage drive. It has NO applications or temp directories/pagefiles on it.

Anyone know what to do?

I've seen a lot of other people with this same problem, and to be honest, I am really surprised that the problem doesn't yet seem to have a fix because I'm sure a lot of us has gone the SDD+HDD route.

Same question on MS site, no good answer...
http://answers.micro...74-4b790a022e8c
http://answers.micro...43-d2a6d532d09f

[Kdawgca]

Open up task manager and click on Resource Monitor button(in Performance tab). See if you notice anything in Disk Activity(Disk tab)

[kenancy]

Hmmm. OK...I did see that "pagefile.sys" is being accessed on the D drive (my HDD). I thought the pagefile was something that Win used only on the main OS drive. What is it doing on the D drive? Is Windows saying it wants a pagefile on all HDD in the system?

[FastMHz]

Generally, the pagefile is best on a platter drive because there's a lot of writes made to it. How much ram do you have? If you have 16gb or more, you can probably disable it completely. It wouldn't hurt to put it on the SSD, but again, your SSD will get written to more often, especially if you have low ram.

The best solution if you don't want your HDD waking up and staying on, or putting the page file on the SSD, is to get enough RAM to disable the page file (16gb or more is safest).

[continuum]

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pagefile is best on a platter drive because there's a lot of writes made to it.

I would actually prefer it on my SSD, the much faster access times reduce the impact of having to page out of memory in the first place...

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is to get enough RAM to disable the page file (16gb or more is safest).

You really do NOT want to disable the page file, even if in practice your system never hits it. See:
http://arstechnica.c...ser-experience/

Applies to all previous modern versions of Windows as well...

[Kdawgca]

Yes, some programs can misbehave if there is no pagefile and even Windows won't write a memory dump file(important if you computer BSOD/crashes a lot) without a pagefile.

But, depending on what kind of tasks are preformed on the computer and the fact that enabling the pagefile is as easy a few click, it can be perfectly okay disabling the page file especially if the constant spin up is leading you to throw the computer out the window.

Also, if you have plenty of ram, use a RAM disk(lastest program I have used it AMD's rebrand of a Dataram application) and make a small pagefile there. It is counter intuitive and I am sure some experts won't like it, but it can be a nice compromise(if somehow no pagefile leads to crashes/errors).

[FastMHz]

All good points. I have 32gb of RAM, no page file, and an 8gb ramdisk using the open source IMDisk that I use for I/O intensive activity (MP3 tagging, etc). I'm not worried about the crash dump, this system doesn't crash (yay AMD).

My gaming rig on the other hand has 16gb of RAM and I *do* have the page file enabled, as some games don't like doing without.

I suppose if you have a ton of RAM, it's definitely worth a shot to disable it and if something doesn't work, selectively enable it or keep a small one around.

And, from experience, XP did *not* like having it disabled at all.

[continuum]

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use a RAM disk(lastest program I have used it AMD's rebrand of a Dataram application) and make a small pagefile there.

/me facepalm

*sigh*

[Kdawgca]

The other part:

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and make a small pagefile there. It is counter intuitive and I am sure some experts won't like it, but it can be a nice compromise(if somehow no pagefile leads to crashes/errors).

FYI: even more discussion on why it can be a bad idea:
http://www.overclock...e-on-a-ram-disk

I am not saying it will work or you will get 1,000,000 times the performance. All I am saying is to try it out if you don't want to disable the pagefile or don't want to put it on your SSD. Turning off hibernation and system restore(after making sure to have backups) can free up some room if the SSD is small.

Also, remember that internet discussion can sometimes forget to factor in how very easy to try out. Also most people on the internet who answer these types of question deal in absolutes, work with business application, and don't always factor in consumers in the "real world"(some people may know this world as the AFK world ).

And again - any mission critical computers will want pagefiles... even machines that have 256GB of ram will still want a page file.

[cbrworm]

I just leave the pagefile on my SSD. I am not too worried about that shortening the life.