Date: Sun, 08 Apr 2007 16:11:51 -0700 From: Garrett Cooper <youshi10@u.washington.edu> To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Automatic means for spinning down disks available? Message-ID: <461976B7.2060808@u.washington.edu> In-Reply-To: <20070408230454.GB17305@thought.org> References: <46192C1B.4060706@u.washington.edu> <20070408221017.23f060ea.breath@unix.net> <20070408230454.GB17305@thought.org>
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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
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