I have two secondary hard-disks attached to my computer, configured to shut down after a few minutes of inactivity (Windows XP’s Power Options). They serve for backup purposes, and do not have drive letters assigned to them, nor are they partitioned/formatted.
Some programs, such as Media Player Classic, used to wake them up upon launch, which was a waste. I have found that blocking these programs’ direct disk access, using Defense+, prevents them from waking the sleeping hard disks!
This works for most cases, however lately I found a program which still wakes the disks up, even with blocked direct disk access. I would like to consult with you, where should I look into blocking it further and prevent it from doing so.
Currently, even programs that used to not wake up the hard-disks when disabling their direct disk access using Defense+, are waking them up.
This leads me to the conclusion that the direct disk access restriction has been modified to be less restrictive in a recent version of the firewall suite (by recent I mean a few months ago).
To reproduce:
Install a secondary hard-disk into your computer
Set it to go to sleep after a few minutes of inactivity in the operating-system’s Power Saving options
Install Media Player Classic with the K-Lite codecs
Open Comodo Firewall → Defense+ → Advanced → Computer Security Policy, and block disk access to “mplayerc.exe”
Wait till the disk is turned off, then play a movie with Media Player Classic
The result: the hard-disk is turned back on despite the firewall setting
This setting used to prevent the hard-disk from waking up in an earlier version, but not anymore.
