Date: Tue, 07 Oct 2003 02:50:42 -0400 From: "C. Ulrich" <dincht@securenym.net> To: Eric Dillenseger <eric@naxalite.ath.cx> Cc: FreeBSD_Questions <freebsd-questions@freebsd.org> Subject: Re: How to turn off the HDD? How to reduce the overall noise? Message-ID: <200310070652.h976qtq28135@anon.securenym.net> In-Reply-To: <20031006184919.GA5870@tweety.naxalite.org> References: <3F810695.5040806@rbcmail.ru> <3F81DFDF.7020903@ec.rr.com> <20031006184919.GA5870@tweety.naxalite.org>
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On Mon, 2003-10-06 at 14:49, Eric Dillenseger wrote: > BTW, turning it off is almost useless, as there's often a little > activity on most *real* OS so reducing noise is better (in fact it > reduces the spinning speed during heavy operations). > Just my 2cts. There's also the case where you might want to shut down a drive which is rarely used. Such as the case with a Slackware box of mine. One drive in it is dedicated to backing up some important stuff on the others, so it's only needed once a day. My init scripts have a line (using hdparm) that completely shuts off the drive after everything's booted up. At the appropriate time, the backup script runs from cron, and the mounting of the disk tells the kernel to spin the drive back up. (Usually takes about 10 seconds.) Once the backup procedure is complete, it runs hdparm again to shut the disk off again. I don't know that powering one drive down saves a ton of money in electricity, or makes the box much quieter, but I figure it has to be saving some wear and tear on a disk that gets accessed maybe a maximum of 30 minutes a day. When I convert the machine to FreeBSD, (one of those when-I-get-around-to-it projects) I'd like to be able to do the same thing, so I'll look for the IBM utility and bug this list some more if it doesn't work out or if I can't find it. :) Charles Ulrich -- http://bityard.net
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