Clicks make me jumpy

I have a desktop PC running Vista Ultimate, and I want it running at its full potential.  I have several hard drives, and notice that they do a "hard click" after a while, turning themselves off. 

I hate it when hard drives do that... I've had too many hard drive crashes that this noise makes me jump out of my chair every time I hear it.  Why does it do this?  I've even selected the "high performance" power profile.

Vista's "high performance" profile in the power options still turns off your hard drive after twenty minutes.  The only way to make sure your hard drives never turn off is to edit the profile.

1. Open up the Control Panel's Power Options

2. Even if you have "high performance" selected, you'll have to change it.  Click on "Change Plan Settings".

3. Click on the "Change advanced power settings" in the sub-window that pops up.

4. Scroll down to the Hard disk section and expand it.  Modify the "Turn off hard disk after" and enter "0" (or use the arrows to bring the value down to 0). 

5. Click on OK and click on "save changes".

Instead of turning off your hard drive sleep completely, you might want to change it to "4 hours" or something.  If you're like me, then you have a habit of leaving the computer on all night.  You just want to hard drive from going to sleep while you're sitting at your desk, but the power savings can be significant over many months.

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