Is there a way to turn off a singular hard drive in Win7 home?
In device manager- disable?
 
I just got a couple of SSDs which are quiet yet I would like to keep an old platter drive as a backup installed.
I've just learned that platters are always spinning. So, there is noise. Can I turn it off somehow?
 
FWIW, So far, the main advantage I've seen with the SSDs is more the quietness than the speed. The speed is nice but not something that blew me away (so far :).
Thanks

If your system and Sonar are both on SSD's you should notice a big speed increase. They need to be connected to high speed sata ports for best performance. I'm not a computer guy.
 
As to stopping the spinner, I've got nothing. My system is much like yours. 2 SSD's and a spinner for storage. I don't know of any way to power it down. Even if you disable it in the bios it would still power up, but would be invisible to the system. I have a drive bay installed so I should remove mine and just plug it in when needed. A drive bay could work for you.

On my old desktop I had a pair of mobile racks so I could rotate backup drives.
Always had option of not having any drives in the racks.
Here's an example of one:
StarTech DRW115CADSBK Spare Hard Drive Tray for the DRW115SATBK Mobile Rack
 
edit* - metal racks are better than plastic which can contribute to drives overheating under heavy use.
 Years ago worked for a company where we'd use mobile racks to run 8 - 12+ hour backup sessions 3x a week and rotated the backup drives.   

Here's an article 
https://stosu.com/how-to-turn-off-a-hard-drive-when-not-in-use/ 
 

Here's actually a better example of a mobile rack drive:
StarTech.com Black Aluminum 5.25in Rugged SATA Hard Drive Mobile Rack Drawer (DRW150SATBK)
 
or a trayless version
StarTech.com 5.25in Trayless Hot Swap Mobile Rack for 3.5in Hard Drive
 
 
 

In your example, I would power the system down and pull the power plug on the HDD(s). The issue you may run into though is windows may remap the drives to different letters when reconnected. Depending on your drive setup, it could take some minutes to correct the drive letters.
 
---Edit
To add the power down reminder.

thanks guys,
 
I tried what the article steven posted said.
In the power options settings in windows, the settings affect drives individually. So, It worked. Waiting for the 2nd drive and sata cables from Newegg to make it permanent. Will have to see if G: drive will stay asleep once the coma is induced. Pretty nifty though.
 
DrL, any particular reason why? Thanks

No. I was thinking the power options affected all drives. I guess I was thinking that as that is the only way I have used it - to keep everything spinning. If you can turn off individual drives, that is great.

Thanks Dr.L. 
To be clear, "I" can't turn off individual drives. I guess it's the way the system works where each drive is handled individually if say you set it to turn off after 5 minutes, if you're not accessing it, it will turn off while others remain active.
Anyway, After reading the other thread here about Win10 HDD, I might want to reconsider my strategy.

The way I handled this is with a $35 HD Docking Station. It is better to have these outside the case now that I have almost all SSD's. In the docking station I can turn them on and off when I want. No drive reasigning. Very easy to use the 4 hard drives that were replaced by the SSD's. Not running making noise unless when I want it. Also not inside heating up the case and having the fans run higher. Mine is a USB3 and backup goes very fast. A few drives are older SATA II so a bit slower so they are used for long term storage more. Lots of advantages for using the docking station including repurposing older drive. Mine is a part of my system I would not want to be without.