Spin Down Hard Disk Programmatically on Windows?

Question

How do you request Windows to spin down a hard disk programmatically? Is there any user-mode function I can call (or kernel-mode function to call or IRP to send) in order to mak

Answer 1

Have you tried WMI? Based on MSDN documentation, you should be able to send spindown command to HDD via WMI:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa393493%28v=VS.85%29.aspx

uint32 SetPowerState(
  [in]  uint16 PowerState,
  [in]  datetime Time
);

EDIT:

This code lists all drives in system and drives that support this API:

strServer = "."

Set objWMI = GetObject("winmgmts://" & strServer & "/root\cimv2")
rem Set objInstances = objWMI.InstancesOf("CIM_DiskDrive",48)
Set objInstances = objWMI.ExecQuery("Select * from CIM_DiskDrive",,48) 
On Error Resume Next
For Each objInstance in objInstances
    With objInstance
        WScript.Echo Join(.Capabilities, ", ")
        WScript.Echo Join(.CapabilityDescriptions, ", ")
        WScript.Echo .Caption
        WScript.Echo .PNPDeviceID
        WScript.Echo "PowerManagementCapabilities: "  & .PowerManagementCapabilities
        WScript.Echo "PowerManagement Supported: " & .PowerManagementSupported
        WScript.Echo .Status
        WScript.Echo .StatusInfo
    End With
On Error Goto 0
Next

Just save this code as a .vbs file and run that from command line.