RAID with power management?

  • Thread starter Thread starter JHD
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JHD

All:

I'm running a Highpoint SATA RAID card under Windows XP Pro, and it works
well enough I suppose (although the support is abysmal and the driver
updates nearly undocumented). But it doesn't support windows power
management, so the disks never spin down. 3Ware's web site indicates they
don't either, and for a home server it's a real disadvantage having
(multiple) disks spinning 24/7 - lots of heat and noise. Anyone know of any
way to mirror a pair of drives under XP and get them to play nicely with
power management?

Thanks,

jhd
 
JHD said:
All:

I'm running a Highpoint SATA RAID card under Windows XP Pro, and it works
well enough I suppose (although the support is abysmal and the driver
updates nearly undocumented). But it doesn't support windows power
management, so the disks never spin down. 3Ware's web site indicates they
don't either, and for a home server it's a real disadvantage having
(multiple) disks spinning 24/7 - lots of heat and noise. Anyone know of any
way to mirror a pair of drives under XP and get them to play nicely with
power management?
Click to expand...

What RAID type? Is the boot drive/volume RAID, which RAID?
 
@newssvr27.news.prodigy.com>,
(e-mail address removed) says...
All:

I'm running a Highpoint SATA RAID card under Windows XP Pro, and it works
well enough I suppose (although the support is abysmal and the driver
updates nearly undocumented). But it doesn't support windows power
management, so the disks never spin down. 3Ware's web site indicates they
don't either, and for a home server it's a real disadvantage having
(multiple) disks spinning 24/7 - lots of heat and noise. Anyone know of any
way to mirror a pair of drives under XP and get them to play nicely with
power management?
Click to expand...

If heat/noise is the concern, swap them for 5400rpm
drives. Or get a quieter case where the drives are
rubber-mounted.

I've not heard of any RAID cards that support powering
down of the drives.
 
Ron Reaugh said:
What RAID type? Is the boot drive/volume RAID, which RAID?
Click to expand...
So far I've just mirrored the boot volume, although I'm about to repartition
it and may add another unprotected drive to the controller for backups,
swapfile, etc.
 
JHD said:
All:

I'm running a Highpoint SATA RAID card under Windows XP Pro, and it works
well enough I suppose (although the support is abysmal and the driver
updates nearly undocumented). But it doesn't support windows power
management, so the disks never spin down. 3Ware's web site indicates they
don't either, and for a home server it's a real disadvantage having
(multiple) disks spinning 24/7 - lots of heat and noise. Anyone know of any
way to mirror a pair of drives under XP and get them to play nicely with
power management?
Click to expand...

Using the mobo's ATA controllers just hook up two separate disks to XP on
separate cables. The first is setup as your boot/system drive. Make it and
the second empty one dynamic disks and then mirror them using XP's intrinsic
software RAID 1(mirroring). That mirror is as good or better than
Highpoint's and it'll power down.
 
JHD said:
All:

I'm running a Highpoint SATA RAID card under Windows XP Pro, and it works
well enough I suppose (although the support is abysmal and the driver
updates nearly undocumented). But it doesn't support windows power
management, so the disks never spin down. 3Ware's web site indicates they
don't either, and for a home server it's a real disadvantage having
(multiple) disks spinning 24/7 - lots of heat and noise. Anyone know of
any way to mirror a pair of drives under XP and get them to play nicely
with power management?
Click to expand...

FWIW, a fully loaded Tivo contains two drives that run 24/7. Tivos as far
as I know have no problems with heat or noise--mine certainly doesn't. And
the drives that came in it were no great shakes from a low-heat or
low-noise viewpoint.

A decent modern drive will be quieter than even the quietest commercially
available power supplies--if your drives are audible something's wrong
somewhere--either something is magnifying the sound they're making or
you've got the wrong drives for your application.
 
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