Date: Sun, 8 Apr 2007 19:40:06 -0700 From: Gary Kline <kline@tao.thought.org> To: Garrett Cooper <youshi10@u.washington.edu> Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Automatic means for spinning down disks available? Message-ID: <20070409024006.GA18460@thought.org> In-Reply-To: <461976B7.2060808@u.washington.edu> References: <46192C1B.4060706@u.washington.edu> <20070408221017.23f060ea.breath@unix.net> <20070408230454.GB17305@thought.org> <461976B7.2060808@u.washington.edu>
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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@thought.org www.thought.org Public Service Unix
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