From owner-freebsd-questions Mon Oct 19 19:13:13 1998 Return-Path: Received: (from majordom@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) id TAA23017 for freebsd-questions-outgoing; Mon, 19 Oct 1998 19:13:13 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG) Received: from dsinw.com (dsinw.com [207.149.40.5]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id TAA23007 for ; Mon, 19 Oct 1998 19:13:12 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from hamellr@dsinw.com) Received: from direct-source.com.direct-source.com (ppp73.pm3-0.pdx.dsinw.com [207.149.41.73]) by dsinw.com (8.8.8/8.7.3) with SMTP id TAA10302; Mon, 19 Oct 1998 19:11:01 -0700 (PDT) Date: Mon, 19 Oct 1998 19:08:43 -0700 () From: Rick Hamell To: Scott Coverdale cc: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Disk spin down when idle In-Reply-To: <002901bdfbc8$2be68300$128614cb@winnie.sysman.com.au> Message-ID: X-X-Sender: hamellr@direct-source.com MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG > I would like to build a server where the disks spin down when idle (reducing noise and electricity consumption). Adaptec SCSI is my preference, bit IDE would do. > > Any advice? Yes, don't build anything to spin down at all! First, the spin down and idle thing is a power saving mode, that saves so little power that turning a 60watt light bulb off for five minutes saves more energy that having two SCSI hard drives idle for 8 hours! Second, the power up and power down of the hard drives drastically decreases the lifespan of the drive. Third, and most importantly, your drives may not come back up again due to hardware and/or software incompatibilities. Power management is not a good idea! It causes way to many problems. Besides... they're not that noisy, unless you're running 100 servers in the same room, in which case all the fans going is going to much worse. But, I'd suggest Quantum Atlas III's they seem to be fairly quiet in general, run them off of a Asus875SC and you'll be one happy camper. Rick To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message