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Windows 10- Firefox causing storage drives to spin up- why?

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  • 1 has this problem
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  • Last reply by thewallace

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In addition to my OS SSD I have several Western Digital "Green" harddrives which I use as storage . When not in use they spin down automatically...and accessing these drives can result in several seconds of delay as they spin up...this is normal.

Now that I have Windows 10 Pro 64-bit installed, I notice that opening up Firefox causes a delay as Firefox causes all these green drives to wake from sleep and spin up. I didn't have this behavior under Windows 7.

Any idea why Firefox is doing this...and how to prevent it?

In addition to my OS SSD I have several Western Digital "Green" harddrives which I use as storage . When not in use they spin down automatically...and accessing these drives can result in several seconds of delay as they spin up...this is normal. Now that I have Windows 10 Pro 64-bit installed, I notice that opening up Firefox causes a delay as Firefox causes all these green drives to wake from sleep and spin up. I didn't have this behavior under Windows 7. Any idea why Firefox is doing this...and how to prevent it?

All Replies (3)

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Do you have any Download History where you saved downloaded files to those drives?

If so, clear the Download History.

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I deleted everything in my history. After waiting a 1/2 hour and opening Firefox...I still get a delay of about 6 seconds and then I hear my storage drives spinning up...so it take about 12 seconds total before Firefox opens.

I have my download settings set to always ask me a location to download. Its possible Firefox is querying all my drives to find a location to use. I'll try that next.

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Ok, I changed my download location from "ask me where..." to "This PC/downloads" thinking that Firefox might be querying all my drives to find a suitable download location....when opened.

Didn't work. Opening Firefox still results in 6 seconds of delay...followed by several more as my storage drives spin up, before Firefox opens.

I can't see any settings in Firefox that would make it query the system drives when opened. Anyone else have a theory as to why this is happening?