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X870E and Windows 11 HDD spin down/up on reboot

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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Deepcuts Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Topic: X870E and Windows 11 HDD spin down/up on reboot
    Posted: Yesterday at 2:19am
Seems I have stumbled upon a nasty issue and my search only came up with one result from a MSI forum (https://forum-en.msi.com/index.php?threads/x870e-carbon-wifi-hdds-spin-down-on-restarting-win11-at-boot-post-the-a2-error-code-displays-for-an-additional-10-seconds-per-sata-hdd.408995/) proof that this affects more than just Asrock motherboards.

I am opening this topic because it seems I am unable to find any other related topic on this issue. Either very few use HDDs these days or the blame for longer boot times is placed on something else instead of HDDs+motherboard/chipset combo.

Here's my setup:

Asrock X870E Taichi 3.20 firmware (latest)
1 NVMe SSD for the OS and boot
1 NVMe SSD for gam?”I mean work
4 Seagate Exos HDDs in a stripe configuration for backups and bulk data on SATA 1,2,3,4

When rebooting from Windows 11, I can hear the distinctive sound of the HDDs spinning down. During the BIOS POST or Windows startup, each HDD initializes one at a time, which drastically increases boot time.
I've disabled all relevant settings I could find in the BIOS, but to no avail. The only change came from disabling a setting called "PCIe power management" or something?”this merely shifted the spin-up phase from Windows startup to the BIOS POST, with no other improvements.
Interestingly, when I booted into a Linux live USB and then rebooted into Windows, there was no spin-down or spin-up behavior.
Likewise, a cold boot presents no issues.
Hotplug enabled or disabled for all SATA ports makes no difference.
HDD sleep is disabled in Windows and I cannot hear the spin down or up while in Windows (in case the setting did not stick).
Latest AMD Chipset drivers installed.

I have to mention that on X570+5950X and the same HDDs, I did not have this issue.

I've opened a ticket with ASRock, but haven?™t received even a confirmation email, let alone a response.

So, does anyone else with one or more HDDs observe this behavior?
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Deepcuts Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 22 hours 40 minutes ago at 4:17am
More info in a new reply because it seems I cannot edit the original one:

I have inserted my old Windows 10 SSD from X570 + 5950X days and the same issue. So it is not a problem with Windows 11 only.
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote M440 Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 10 hours 12 minutes ago at 4:45pm
It's a Windows issue - it just assumes it knows better and sets ridiculous power management flags for devices. There are Wi-Fi cards that become unmanageable after Windows changes their settings you have to power down the PC and wait. It even happened to my MT7922.

It looks like Windows sends a signal to turn off the device entirely instead of putting it into standby. Who knows what its doing with HDD head parking and all that. I dont even want to know.

Any BIOS fix a vendor provides is just a workaround. What other logical explanation could there be?

I would recheck the power management features.

As for Linux? I use hd-idle to configure per-device power management. Ive set a specific spindown time (standby mode - I could turn off the drive, but from what Ive read, thats not great for drive health), head parking time, and I can read the drive status directly using smartctl if I want, i wake it up and mount to the system only when i use it, i have scripts for that. Ive got one HDD thats about 12 years old, and Im not taking any risks with it.



mm@desktop ~
--> sudo diskinfo
- smartctl -i -n standby /dev/sda

smartctl 7.5 2025-04-30 r5714 [x86_64-linux-6.14.5-zen1-1-zen] (local build)
Copyright (C) 2002-25, Bruce Allen, Christian Franke, www.smartmontools.org

Device is in STANDBY mode, exit(2)

- hdparm -C /dev/sda

/dev/sda:
drive state is: standby

- systemctl status hd-idle

??hd-idle.service - hd-idle - spin down idle hard disks
     Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/hd-idle.service; enabled; preset: disabled)
     Active: active (running) since Tue 2025-05-06 07:02:55 CEST; 1 day 3h ago
Invocation: b0a5dd5e66a9473fb2933f2f01558a36
       Docs: man:hd-idle(8)
   Main PID: 834 (hd-idle)
      Tasks: 10 (limit: 35296)
     Memory: 10.3M (peak: 11.8M)
        CPU: 16min 58.699s
     CGroup: /system.slice/hd-idle.service
             ?��?834 /usr/sbin/hd-idle -i 0 -a /dev/sda -i 600

May 06 07:02:55 desktop systemd[1]: Started hd-idle - spin down idle hard disks.
May 06 07:02:55 desktop hd-idle[834]: symlinkPolicy=0, defaultIdle=0, defaultCommand=scsi, defaultPowerCondition=0, debug=false, logFile=, devices={name=sda, givenName=/>
May 06 07:12:55 desktop hd-idle[834]: /dev/sda spindown
May 06 08:06:18 desktop hd-idle[834]: /dev/sda spindown
May 06 09:10:12 desktop hd-idle[834]: /dev/sda spindown
May 06 11:15:34 desktop hd-idle[834]: /dev/sda spindown
May 06 14:16:59 desktop hd-idle[834]: /dev/sda spindown
May 06 16:51:21 desktop hd-idle[834]: /dev/sda spindown
May 07 08:09:34 desktop hd-idle[834]: /dev/sda spindown
mm@desktop ~
--> sct cat hd-idle.service
# /usr/lib/systemd/system/hd-idle.service
[Unit]
Description=hd-idle - spin down idle hard disks
Documentation=man:hd-idle(8)
After=suspend.target hibernate.target hybrid-sleep.target suspend-then-hibernate.target

[Service]
Type=simple
EnvironmentFile=/etc/default/hd-idle
ExecStart=/usr/sbin/hd-idle $HD_IDLE_OPTS
Restart=always

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target
mm@desktop ~
--> cat /etc/default/hd-idle
--------------------------------------------
File: /etc/default/hd-idle
----------------------------------------
# defaults file for hd-idle

# start hd-idle automatically?
START_HD_IDLE=true

# hd-idle command line options
# Options are:
# -a <name>               Set device name of disks for subsequent idle-time
#                          parameters (-i). This parameter is optional in the
#                          sense that there's a default entry for all disks
#                          which are not named otherwise by using this
#                          parameter. This can also be a symlink
#                          (e.g. /dev/disk/by-uuid/...)
# -i <idle_time>          Idle time in seconds.
# -c <command_type>       Api call to stop the device. Possible values are "scsi"
#                          (default value) and "ata".
# -p <power_condition>
#                          Power condition to send with the issued SCSI START STOP UNIT command. Possible values
#                          are `0-15` (inclusive). The default value of `0` works fine for disks accessible via the
#                          SCSI layer (USB, IEEE1394, ...), but it will *NOT* work as intended with real SCSI / SAS disks.
#                          A stopped SAS disk will not start up automatically on access, but requires a startup command for reactivation.
#                          Useful values for SAS disks are `2` for idle and `3` for standby.
# -s symlink_policy       Set the policy to resolve symlinks for devices.
#                          If set to "0", symlinks are resolve only on start.
#                          If set to "1", symlinks are also resolved on runtime
#                          until success. By default symlinks are only resolve on start.
#                          If the symlink doesn't resolve to a device, the default
#                          configuration will be applied.
# -l <logfile>            Name of logfile (written only after a disk has spun
#                          up). Please note that this option might cause the
#                          disk which holds the logfile to spin up just because
#                          another disk had some activity. This option should
#                          not be used on systems with more than one disk
#                          except for tuning purposes. On single-disk systems,
#                          this option should not cause any additional spinups.
#
# Options not exactly useful here:
# -t <disk>               Spin-down the specified disk immediately and exit.
# -d                      Debug mode. It will print debugging info to
#                          stdout/stderr (/var/log/syslog if started as with systemctl)
# -h                      Print usage information.
#HD_IDLE_OPTS="-i 180 -l /var/log/hd-idle.log"
#HD_IDLE_OPTS="-i 180 -l /var/log/hd-idle.log"
HD_IDLE_OPTS="-i 0 -a /dev/sda -i 600"
------------------------------------------------
mm@desktop ~
--> cat bin/diskinfo
-------------------------------------------------
File: bin/diskinfo
----------------------------------------------------
#!/bin/sh
echo ">> smartctl -i -n standby /dev/sda"
echo ""
smartctl -i -n standby /dev/sda
echo ""
echo ">> hdparm -C /dev/sda"
hdparm -C /dev/sda
echo ""
echo ">> systemctl status hd-idle"
echo ""
systemctl status hd-idle
------------------------------------------------
mm@desktop ~
--> h | rg please
sudo hdparm --please-destroy-my-drive -J 30 /dev/sda1



Edited by M440 - 9 hours 7 minutes ago at 5:50pm
asrock b650m-hdv/m.2, ryzen 7700x@85watt, arch/kde
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Deepcuts Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 6 hours 38 minutes ago at 8:19pm
Thank you for your reply.

It might be something to do with Windows, but please note that the exact same Windows 10 install (moved SSD) on a motherboard with X570 and 5950X does not present this issue.
Also, got the info from another user who got the info from Asrock support on how to go around this issue for the moment:
In BIOS, set the SATA to RAID instead of AHCI.

This indeed fixes the spin-up/down but volumes made with Disk management are busted.
Hopefully, a better fix will come.
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