HDD sleep mode

[On2wheels]

Has anyone had their system ignore the hard disk (platter drive) sleep mode setting in the Power Plan? If you've set it to 0 minutes it should never stop spinning, and mine was for years but for some reason this weekend something changed the way the power plan operates and stops the drive. I've even set it to 99999minutes and it still stops spinning because hearing it spin up is so easy to notice.

I even went as far as creating a new plan to see if it detects it but it didn't.
Is that window supposed to have the "Never" option? I don't think I've ever seen that in any OS. Running Windows 11 24H2 now.
I'm going through my installed programs and the xbox app was the last thing I installed, could that have done something? I know that app creates folders with very high permission levels so maybe it can change system settings.

 

[lowfat]

What drive make / model? Have you checked Resource Monitor to see if anything on the disk is being accessed?

 

[JD]

How old is this HDD? I'd be more inclined to say it's dying than it being a power plan issue.

 

[On2wheels]

How old is this HDD? I'd be more inclined to say it's dying than it being a power plan issue.

It's quite old. Is there a utility I can use to get drive info like that from?

 

[JD]

You can give https://crystalmark.info/en/software/crystaldiskinfo/ a shot. It'll show all the SMART info at least.

Every HDD company has their own diagnostic tools too that will also perform a basic or extended SMART test which may help give some further insight into the health of the drive.