Vista - Make a local hard disk offline, in a software manner?

I have two hard disks in my computer. Nowadays many people have more
than one hard disk. Let's call them A and B. A is a large disk, and I
have installed Windows on A. Most of my personal files are also stored
on A. B , however, is relatively small and contains seldom used files
and back up copies.

Since B is not often accessed, B usually gets turned off by OS. But
for no apparent reason ( I guess it maybe due to some sort of
defragmentation or indexing) B gets turned on making an annoying
sound.

I could manually cut off the power by opening the chassi and plugging
out the power code of B, but that will be even more annoying.

I can set B won't be turned off, but it will waste a lot of power
since B is idle most of the time.

Can't I just make the B offline till I want it to be functioning
again? I mean I'd like to turn B off using some sort of software and
prevent it to be automatically turned on until, I explicitly turn it
on. I saw PerfectDisk (a defragmenation software) make a drive offline
so that it to be disapeared from Windows Explorer. So it should be
possible in some way....

Any ideas?

In article <35116aa5-be46-4b21-91fe-446700bca5a3@xxxxxx>,
Cat <typingcat@xxxxxx> wrote:Well, you could use disk management to remove the drive letter.

run "diskmgmt.msc" and right click the disc drive. Choose
"change drive letter" then "remove drive letter". When you want to use
it you could do the same thing but this time "assign drive letter".

If it really bothers you pull it out and mount the drive in a USB enclosure.
Your computer may perform better if you move your paging file to the second
drive.
There are also different philosophies with regard to moving your data files,
like My Documents, to the second hard drive rather than keeping them on the
primary.
Lastly, you could use the second hard drive to install XP just to see the
speed you have been missing with Vista.

"dullpain" <fac_187@xxxxxx> wrote in message
news:879C2E41-1612-47ED-AE7E-BCE2122D68A8@xxxxxx
I don't lose any speed with Vista. I have four systems, one of them
with Vista and the other three with XP. The Vista machine runs just as fast
as the three XP machines. If you are running Vista you need to figure out
why you are losing speed. Hardware issues probably, or maybe even a bloated,
resource hungry security suite or inappropriate configurations.
In any event, you should not assume everyone experiences the problem
you have concerning speed. My Vista machine runs so well I rarely use the
other three. I had it built with the necessary hardware. If your machine
doesn't have the required hardware to run Vista properly that's not Vista's
fault. Place the blame where it belongs.

C.B.


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