http://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=24279
--- Comment #3 from Thomas Spear Speeddymon@gmail.com 2010-09-06 18:32:20 CDT --- Leighman, I was using the Wordpad scenario as an example. Can you check in winecfg if your external drive is setup to be listed as a certain drive letter?
The reason I ask is that if you have that external drive set as such, then assuming I am correct in how wine works, it is looking for the drive every time it starts up, for the sake of assigning a drive letter to the drive. Kind of like a hardware probe when Windows starts for loading the drivers for said drive. If you were to remove the external drive from winecfg's drive setup altogether, or maybe make /mnt the drive letter instead; I have a feeling that wine would no longer probe the directory that drive is mounted at, and therefore no longer cause it to spin up.
Of course that is all just assumption based on what little I know of how wine looks for drives and initializes them as drive letters.