Does turning hard dist off affect folding?

as in turning hard disk off in the power settings? Can it still fold with it off?

Yes, but it will slow it down, since it will have to wait for the hd to power back up in order to write the to the file after a frame is finished.

which is once every 6 minutes on average, which means it probably won't be worth it

You might not want to turn it off unless it bothers you, because having the HDD spin up from a dead stop every 6 min or so probably wouldn't be so great for it.

hmm I see
So HD is constantly spinning even when not in use?

Also, I have it set to turn HD off after an hour. Does that mean an hour after not using the PC or an hour after since HD was last in use? If its the latter then since folding uses HD about every 6 min then HD wouldnt ever turn off.

But I reset it to 'never' turn off now anyway.