Hard drive power saving

  • Thread starter Thread starter Mika Takala
  • Start date Start date
Settings Windows to shut down inactive drives will spin down drives
without partitions -- I tested to confirm :)
Click to expand...


Did you test with the hard drives on different controllers, or were both
drives on the same controller? For IDE, both the master and slave drive
on the same port are using the same controller. If the master is busy
but the slave is idle, does the slave actually power down? When looking
at the signal pinout for an IDE cable, like at
http://www.bbdsoft.com/ide.html, none of the signals have to do with
power, so it must be an instruction sent to the hard drive to ask it to
power down after some period of idleness, so I continued my Googling to
find out how to stop/start the platters spinning.

From what I found, an instruction code of E0 (hex) spins down the drive
and E1 spins it back up; see
http://hem.passagen.se/communication/ide.html. So it looks like the
drives can be individually spun down based on a separate expiration
timer for each hard drive. What I'm wondering is if the spun-down
*slave* drive will remain spun down while the shared address and data
bus are active for the *master* drive. After all, how would the slave
know that an E1 instruction was sent to it for it to spin back up if it
wasn't actually powered up to read that instruction? The platters are
stopped from spinning but the hard drive doesn't actually power down
since the logic on the PCB still has to be alive to know when it gets an
E1 instruction. So it definitely looks like you select individual
drives as to which ones are spun-down to save the power consumed by the
motor.
 
Vanguard said:
"PCDaddy" wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
>
> DevilsPGD Wrote:
>> In message PCDaddy
>> wrote:
>>
>> >
>> >Mika Takala Wrote:
>> >> Does Windows XP SP2 support hard drive power saving on hardware
>> level or
>> >> by
>> >> partition level? I want to know that if I have a hd in a computer
>> >> without
>> >> any partitions that Windows recognizes, will Windows spin it down
>> >> according
>> >> to the power saving settings?
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> --
>> >> Mika Takala
>> >> note the invalidated reply-to address
>> >
>> >If you have a hard drive without a partition, you'll know it.
>> (kidding)
>> >The power options should support spin down of multiple drives in the
>> pc.
>> >Although, if there is a hard drive w\o a partition, i doubt it will
>> >be
>> >spinning anyway. If i'm correct, the extra drive won't spin until it
>> >is partitioned and in use.
>>
>> How will the system know whether or not there are partitions until it
>> spins up the drive and checks? -- Once the drive is running (And most
>> spin up on power-on anyway), it will stay running until something
>> turns
>> it off.
>>
>> Settings Windows to shut down inactive drives will spin down drives
>> without partitions -- I tested to confirm :)
>>
>>
>> --
>> Q. How many Microsoft technicians does it take to change a lightbulb?
>> A. Three. Two to hold the ladder and one to hammer the bulb into a
>> faucet.
>
> For one, i hope you don't run too many tests. For two i never said it
> didn't spin up for a check on boot. YOU assumed i did. for three, even
> when a partitioned drive wont spin up, a major factor is a partition
> problem. Look it up. for four, i just checked my non p samsung in my
> athlon and guess what braniac, it didn't stay SPUN. So before you
> think
> you know what you're saying, and trying to make others look like
> fools,
> read your Q&A and apply it to yourself. :)
>
>
> --
> PCDaddyPosted from https://www.pcreview.co.uk/ newsgroup access
>


Sorry, PCDaddy, but most of us here aren't psychic (or pyscho) so we can
only go by what you actually said, and often not much divining effort is
employed in figuring out what unmentioned information you may assume in
your statements that you don't tell us. There is what you said and what
you meant to say.

What you said: "if there is a hard drive w\o a partition, i doubt it
will be
spinning anyway."
What you meant to say: "if there is a hard drive w\o a partition, i
doubt it will REMAIN
spinning"
Whether the drive remains spinning depends on the power options. I
don't recall the BIOS power saving options or those in Windows where you
can differentiate between drives, so you apply the same power saving
options to all drives.

What you said: "the extra drive won't spin until it is partitioned and
in use."
What you meant to say: "the extra drive won't REMAIN spinNING UNLESS it
is partitioned and in use.

So, with the guessed assumptions of what you meant to include in your
statements, sure, you're correct in what you meant to say. I drew the
same conclusion as DevilsPGD regarding your statements. Maybe you were
correct. DevilsPGD is correct. So it sounds like you simply corrected
your post by claiming everyone should know what you meant to say.
Click to expand...

Well good for you. you added two words to my reply that you figured should have been the way you and devilspp would like it. Oh so now i'm psyco for defending myself. If you would have read every post clearly, you would have seen how my words were completely twisted on most, not just someone mistaking what i meant. for one, all you did was stick up for devilspp and made no real point. for two, i don't see how many of the replies to my reply were that badly assumed. And all you did was defend someone and jump on the good guy bandwagon. Are you looking in the mirror and smiling at yourself now? Proud of yourself? instead of a later post that means nothing, go help someone if your so smart.
 
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