How to turn off the hard drive after not working in Windows 10

Installing Turn Off Hard Disk After in Power Options allows the user to set the power to the hard drive (HDD) to be turned off, after detecting it has been inactive for a period of time. This setting will not affect SSD or NVMe drives.

Leaving the hard drive turned off automatically after not using it can save energy and extend the PC's battery life.

When you or anything trying to access the hard drive is turned off, there will be a few seconds of delay before the hard drive automatically returns to work and allows access.

This guide will show you how to turn off the hard drive after not using it for a specified few minutes or never in Windows 10.

Note : If you have set to turn off the hard drive after a period of inactivity, then you will experience a delay if you restart the explorer, because you will have to wait for all turned off drives to go back to work first. When explorer is restarted.

Option 1: Change the Turn Off Hard Disk After setting in Power Options

1. Open Advanced settings in Power Options.

2. Expand Hard disk and Turn off hard disk after , set the number of minutes or choose never ( Never ) for what you want and click OK.

Note : The default option is 20 minutes. Do not set the number of minutes low. Doing so can cause more wear and tear on the hard drive as they will have to change their spin (spin up / spin down) more often.

Option 2: Change Turn Off Hard Disk After settings in Command Prompt

1. Open Command Prompt.

2. Type the command (s) you want to use below into the Command Prompt and press Enter .

When using batteries:

 powercfg /SETDCVALUEINDEX SCHEME_CURRENT 0012ee47-9041-4b5d-9b77-535fba8b1442 6738e2c4-e8a5-4a42-b16a-e040e769756e 

And / or when charging:

 powercfg /SETACVALUEINDEX SCHEME_CURRENT 0012ee47-9041-4b5d-9b77-535fba8b1442 6738e2c4-e8a5-4a42-b16a-e040e769756e 

Note : Replace in the above commands with the number of seconds you want to wait before turning off the hard drive.

Using zero seconds will be the same as selecting "Never".

The default data value is 1200 seconds (20 minutes).