Automatic means for spinning down disks available?

[Gary Kline]

On Sun, Apr 08, 2007 at 04:11:51PM -0700, Garrett Cooper wrote:
> Gary Kline wrote:
> >On Sun, Apr 08, 2007 at 10:10:17PM +0400, Yuri Grebenkin wrote:
> >  
> >>Just wonder if it's better for an HDD not to spindown at all.
> >>Maybe it's safer to spin in peace than to park/launch?
> >>What do you think?
> >>    
> >
> >
> >	My guess (really a SWAG) is that it's bettter to leave things
> >	just happily spinning, 24*7.  In Nov, '99 a power off//on
> >	destryed my new (105-day-old) 9G SCSI drive.  Off ffor fewer 
> >	than five seconds, then a spike or two, and the drive went
> >	deadder than a decade-old corpse.  Lost 10 months of files.
> >	((Well, my tape backup had flubbed up.))  
> >
> >	Who would know???    I've heard both sides, and so far, just 
> >	leaving drive spin seems slightly better.  
> >
> >	{Futureistic[?] idea: maybe a new drive can have a mode of
> >	 Full-Operation and (slower) Spin.  It wouldn't take more than
> >	 a second to transition from the slow-spin to full-op mode.
> >	 Open files, OS states, and whatever could be stored to RAM... .
> >
> >	 Any little old winemakers, er, diskmakers out there?
> >	}
> >  
> Good point. The worst stress points during a disks life are at spin-up 
> from what I've read.

	Hm.  Yep, that's what happpened with my 9G SCSI ....  it just 
	kind of ground or dragged on startup.  After 3 tries, it was
	kuput.

> 
> Also, about the disk spinning at different speeds: many contemporary 
> disks have "acoustics" levels where you can adjust the speed on demand 
> (assuming you knew the hardware level instructions to send to the 
> controllers). Unfortunately I don't know those settings, so I can't say 
> what is and isn't possible.
> 
> The only upside is at least all disk makers seem to be amalgamating into 
> either: Fujitsu, Hitachi, Quantum, Seagate, and WD, so figuring out the 
> standards shouldn't be *too* hard =).

	Anyway, I like the idea of saving drives and power if a computer 
	isn't active.  Else if everything can fit into RAM.  ...

	gary


> 
> -Garrett
> 
> >	gary-the-thrifty
> >
> >  
> >>>Hello again all,
> >>>	I was wondering if there was an automatic, and possibly timed means 
> >>>	to
> >>>spin down disks available in either ports or the base system, by chance.
> >>>	Just trying to cut down on energy use, and increase my disks' lives 
> >>>	:).
> >>>TIA,
> >>>-Garrett
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-- 
  Gary Kline  kline at thought.org   www.thought.org  Public Service Unix