I'm getting a laptop tomorrow with an SSD as the primary (operating system) drive, and I will be putting my old laptop's HDD into it as a secondary drive for holding music etc.

Since HDDs use power when idle, just to keep themselves spinning, I was wondering what the optimum settings for 'spinning down' the drive might be, as well as any other tips. I remember seeing reference to a settings file where I would be able to choose how long the drive can sit idle for before spinning down, but I don't know where it was.

Additionally, if the drive uses an NTFS file system, will the system write or read anything from the drive by itself which could prevent the spin-down from happening? I was intending to permanently mount it using the installer to /windows, but would be open to any better methods if this would cause a problem.

Thanks for any assistance.