Yes, wear and tear can still be a problem even today with a consumer-grade HDD like a Seagate Barracuda Compute, for example, and yes, the buzzing noise of spinning HDDs is much, MUCH less annoying than people who keep asking WHY this or that person is concerned about it instead of actually trying to be helpful IMO. Maybe they should go work for Microsoft.. if they aren't already working there. lmao
That being said, even though it still doesn't address the problem of making a HDD sleep after a certain, specific, idle timeout period, you can refer to my posts in
this old thread. Whether you want to read through all that and give it a shot is your call and yours alone, but for me it works with my 8TB Seagate ST8000DM002 (old model) hooked up to my laptop through an AS Media ASMT 2105 module (pic below). Also, to work around the problem of the computer stalling each time when the HDD spins back up, I suggest the combination of two things. Firstly, try my method to prevent Windows from randomly spinning the HDD back up again especially during those times when the stall that results is going to be an annoyance to you. Secondly, use KeepAliveHD or similar if needed to prevent the HDD from falling asleep, also during those times. Windows can't randomly spin it back up again if it's still spinning so that's why. The main idea is to keep it spun down when you're not going to use it for a certain period of time that you can (manually) decide.
You might still be able to find another way to fix the problem of the HDD refusing to go to sleep. Even so, in the vast majority of cases AFAIK Windows will randomly spin them back up again, and, if that also happens to be your case, then I don't know another method to prevent that besides using a physical power switch to keep the HDD's power turned off (and/or to keep the USB port disabled). So yes, it can be extremely annoying to some, and less annoying to others. But no, after all the years [it goes all the way back to Windows 8, no less..], Microsoft still couldn't give two hoots about that,
because they are annoying.
