Individual Hard Disk Power management under WS2008R2

Question

Are Hard Disks are controlled individually under WS2008R2? meaning one HD is running 24/7 with database requests while another is spun down after 20mins until the automated monthly backup occurs.

Neither of these links mentions this: http://aps2.toshiba-tro.de/kb0/HTD84026Q0000R01.htm http://blogs.technet.com/b/askds/archive/2008/03/17/managing-power-with-group-policy-part-1-of-3.aspx

Anyone tried hdparm (a command line utility for getting/setting various HD parameters) on WS2008R2? The real question is; does a wake up command get issued to ALL drives, or just the drive that is required at that moment?

Answer 1

I believe that

A) yes, drives are controlled individually; while I don't have direct experience with WS2008R2, Win7 does stop rotating individual drives; and

B) wake commands are drive-specific.

This assumes that your system can see the individual drives (ie they are not hidden in an aggregate like a RAID controller) and that the drives really are idle. Any activity that can't be satisfied from cache (which means any write) will require the drive to be spinning.