💽 HDDKeepAlive

🌐 English | 🇨🇳 简体中文

A lightweight, silent Windows system tray utility designed to prevent external mechanical hard drives (HDDs) from automatically spinning down or entering sleep mode.

Zero external dependencies, single-file native executable (~28 KB), adaptive USB storage auto-discovery, and real-time PnP hot-plug detection.

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⚡ Why HDDKeepAlive? (Comparison with Existing Tools)

While tools like KeepAliveHD, DiskNotSleep, or manual Task Scheduler scripts exist, most were built over a decade ago and require tedious manual configuration. HDDKeepAlive was built from scratch to address their long-standing limitations:

Feature / Capability	Traditional Tools (e.g. KeepAliveHD, DiskNotSleep)	💽 HDDKeepAlive
🔍 Drive Discovery	❌ Manual: User must manually browse and bind drive letters or folders	✅ 100% Automatic: Win32 kernel IOCTL queries hardware BusType == 7 (USB) directly
🔌 PnP Hot-Plug Detection	❌ None: Changing USB ports or plugging new drives requires restarting/reconfiguring	✅ Real-Time: Intercepts Windows WM_DEVICECHANGE broadcasts; adapts within 1.5s
🛡️ Internal SSD Protection	❌ None: Inexperienced users may select internal NVMe/SATA SSDs, causing unnecessary write wear	✅ Hardware-Level Guard: Automatically ignores internal NVMe, SATA SSDs, and system drive C:\
⚡ Cache Bypass Mechanism	⚠️ Standard WriteAllText (can be buffered by Windows Write Cache; risks "Delayed Write Failed")	✅ Strict FileStream.Flush(true) bypasses OS cache directly to hardware controller
📦 Packaging & Size	⚠️ Multi-file installer or heavy frameworks (~several MBs, configuration windows)	✅ 28 KB single standalone executable, zero runtime dependencies, silent in tray
🌐 UI & Localization	⚠️ Monolingual English	✅ Bilingual: Instant live toggle between English and 简体中文

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🛑 Background & Problem

1. ⏱️ Spin-down Latency: External 3.5" and 2.5" mechanical hard drives (enclosures, docking stations, multi-bay DAS storage) frequently spin down their spindle motors after a few minutes of inactivity due to aggressive disk firmware or Windows APM (Advanced Power Management) policies. When accessing files again, users experience a 3-8 second freeze while the drive spins back up.
2. ⚙️ Drive Wear & Tear: Mechanical drives experience the highest physical wear during spindle spin-up and head park/unpark transitions (Load/Unload cycles). Excessive cycling degrades drive longevity.
3. ⚠️ Shortcomings of Existing Solutions:
   • Heavy runtimes (Python, Node.js, Electron wrappers).
   • Hardcoded drive letters (E:, F:) that break when plugging drives into different ports or machines.
   • Indiscriminate writes to internal NVMe/SATA SSDs, wasting flash write endurance.

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✨ Key Features

• 🌐 Bilingual Interface (English / 简体中文):
  • Automatically selects system UI language (defaults to Chinese on Chinese locales, English elsewhere).
  • One-click live language toggle directly from the system tray menu without restarting.
• 🔌 Dual-Engine Adaptive Bus Detection (Zero Hardcoding):
  • Uses Win32 kernel API CreateFile + DeviceIoControl(IOCTL_STORAGE_QUERY_PROPERTY) to verify BusType == 7 (USB).
  • Sub-millisecond execution time, requiring zero administrator elevation.
  • Automatically skips internal NVMe (BusType=17) and SATA (BusType=11) solid-state drives, as well as the system partition (C:\).
  • Fallback Storage WMI provider (MSFT_Disk) for non-standard environments.
• ⚡ Real-Time PnP Hot-Plug Listening:
  • Intercepts Windows broadcast messages WM_DEVICECHANGE (0x0219), dynamically refreshing target drives within 1.5 seconds upon insertion or removal.
• 🛡️ Minimal Physical Keep-Alive Footprint:
  • Writes a tiny 19-byte timestamp to a hidden file (.hdd_keepalive) in the drive root and invokes Flush(true) to pass through the OS file cache directly to disk hardware.
  • Generates less than 50 KB of disk writes per day, causing zero wear.
• 💻 Native Tray Management & Persistence:
  • Resides quietly in the system notification area.
  • Displays partition volumes and available capacity (e.g. [E:] Backup (128.8 GB / 1200.0 GB)).
  • Allows toggling keep-alive for individual drives and opening drive root in Explorer.
  • Configurable heartbeat intervals (30s, 60s recommended, 120s, 180s), saved automatically to HKCU\Software\HDDKeepAlive.
• 📦 Pure Native Single-File Executable:
  • Clean C# codebase in a single file (Program.cs), compiled for .NET 4.0-4.8 (pre-installed on Windows 7, 8, 10, 11).
  • No installer, no background console window, ~28 KB portable binary.

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🛠️ Building from Source

Method 1: Using Built-in Windows C# Compiler (No Visual Studio Required)

Double-click build.bat or run:

%windir%\Microsoft.NET\Framework64\v4.0.30319\csc.exe /target:winexe /optimize+ /r:System.Drawing.dll,System.Windows.Forms.dll,System.Management.dll /out:HDDKeepAlive.exe Program.cs

Method 2: Using MSBuild or Visual Studio

msbuild HDDKeepAlive.csproj /p:Configuration=Release

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🚀 Getting Started

1. Download HDDKeepAlive.exe from the Releases page.
2. Double-click to launch; an HDD icon will appear in the system tray.
3. Plug in any external hard drive; a balloon notification will confirm it is protected.
4. Right-click the tray icon to:
   • 📁 View connected external drives and toggle protection per drive.
   • ⚡ Send an immediate keep-alive heartbeat.
   • ⏱️ Adjust interval (30s, 60s, 120s, 180s).
   • 🌐 Switch language (English / 简体中文).
   • 🚀 Toggle Start with Windows.
   • 📊 View running statistics and uptime.

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📄 License

This project is licensed under the MIT License.