Automatic means for spinning down disks available?

[Garrett Cooper]

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.

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 =).

-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