Turn off your hard drive after a time of inactivity in Windows

Looking for a way to disable your hard drive disc after some idle time in Windows 10 and Windows 11? Here are two methods to do it.

If you feel that the hard drive is consuming a lot of power, especially on your laptop running Windows 10 or Windows 11, you can simply turn it off after a certain amount of inactivity. This helps to save its life battery of your system. See two methods.

Method 1: Through the power supply options

1. Open the Execute dialog box while pressing Win + R. Enter the word powercfg.cpl and press Enter to open the Power Options.
2. In the Power Options window, click Change design settings in the Selected design you have set.

1. After that, select Change advanced power settings.

• In the next window that appears, click on Hard drive to develop it. Then click on Hard disk shutdown after. From there, you need to change the time for the Battery (minutes) and for the Socket.

1. When done, click Apply and click OK to save the changes.

Method 2: Via the command line

This is another method of setting your hard drive to shut down after a period of inactivity in Windows 11 and Windows 10. Here, you will use the command line for a much faster solution. Do the following:

1. Open the Execute dialog box while pressing Wind + R. Enter the word cmd and press Ctrl + Shift + Enter at the same time to open the Command Prompt with Administrator privileges.

• Now, copy-paste the following command and press Enter.
  powercfg -change -disk-timeout-dc 0

Note: Before running, change to 0 with the minutes you want to turn off the hard drive after the idle time while it is connected to the battery.

1. Then run the following command and press Enter.
   powercfg -change-disk-timeout-ac-0

Note: Before running, change 0 to the minutes you want to turn off the hard drive after the idle time while it is plugged in.

After performing these commands, close the command prompt and restart your system. Now when your computer will turn off if Windows 10 and Windows 11 remain inert after the specified time.