is there anything i can do to get power management to put some of my HDDs on power saving independant to what im doing on the pc?
id like to power down the older drives im not using as theyre making a racket.
possible at all ? :?
In linux you can use hdparm to set your drives to power down after a certain time of inactivity. No idea about windows though.
Cant you do it in BIOS ?
This has been part of Windows Power Management options for as long as I can rememeber! :roll:
Quote from: WalrusbonzoThis has been part of Windows Power Management options for as long as I can rememeber! :roll:
Thats for all drives though, you cannot set an independant timeout for specific drives afaik ?!
yup all drives from what i remember,
i want to do it individually, so i can turn off the old and crappy 80gb to see if its the one making the racket in the pc :roll:
ner mind
HDD manufactorer software perhaps ?
had a look on maxtor site, nothing beyond the verify tool was in downloads.
disabling in the bios still lets the drive power and spin itself up, id have to physically unplug the drives power to get it to stop.
hmm think i might get one or two of those 500 GB drives and scrap the old ones :lol:
if anyone has any more ideas, lemme know
there are powersaving options in BIOS as well but they differ from MB to MB if u are lucky u can set them individually
rig yourself up a bunch of switches on an unused drive bay face plate. Feed them the power from the PSU and then from the switch back to the HDD; switch on/off at your pleasure :)
Quote from: Nimrodrig yourself up a bunch of switches on an unused drive bay face plate. Feed them the power from the PSU and then from the switch back to the HDD; switch on/off at your pleasure :)
Thats a cool idea!
Quote from: Nimrodrig yourself up a bunch of switches on an unused drive bay face plate. Feed them the power from the PSU and then from the switch back to the HDD; switch on/off at your pleasure :)
wont this cause problems with the IDE bus which is not designed for hot swapping?
sounds good :)
do you know how windows will behave if i flick the power like that to one of the hard drives?
the old noisy ones are ide, not sata
starting to think and external usb 2.0 enclosure might be a better idea instead,
just unplug it when i dont need it :D
do all of them need seperate power supplies?
Quote from: MongooseQuote from: Nimrodrig yourself up a bunch of switches on an unused drive bay face plate. Feed them the power from the PSU and then from the switch back to the HDD; switch on/off at your pleasure :)
wont this cause problems with the IDE bus which is not designed for hot swapping?
probably, im pretty sure windows doesnt tollerate them dropping out very well, when i had my psu dying and not supplying enough juice to one of the drives, itd freeze up randomly while waiting for the drive to spin up properly.
id have to see how it handles a complete loss :?
I had an old drive that would lose power ocassionally, with Win98 the entire machine would just sit there waiting for it to power up (even if it wasnt being used) - not sure how XP/Vista would handle it though.
Its a good point and one I hadnt considered :s
USB enclosures could be the answer but they can be very loud too :s I have my old HDDs hooked up to a PC thats in the loft ! Although I do have some heat issues in the summer with that too !!
Quote from: NimrodIts a good point and one I hadnt considered :s
USB enclosures could be the answer but they can be very loud too :s I have my old HDDs hooked up to a PC thats in the loft ! Although I do have some heat issues in the summer with that too !!
true but they can at least be turned off when not in use.
I currently have my DVD drive in a USB enclosure due to my motherboard having developed an alergy to DVD-RW drives. Does the job but is noisey as you like when Im trying to watch a film :(
doh!, loft is an option though, as ive got my main hub up there (old 3com auto 100/10 hub with noisy fan)
just need a good NAS box then, any ideas?
ive got a *really* old pc but not got it booting so may or may not be an option, although the board is that old itll deffinatly balk at larger than 120GB drives.
*sigh*, stand alone NAS boxes then with multiple IDE and possibly SATA ? :D
You don;t want much do you ;)
Are the HDDs NTFS or FAT32 ? Youll have problems getting a NAS caddy that supports NTFS !
I have a Linksys NSLU2 USB2 NAS hub thingy that does work ok with NTFS (Read Only). It has 2 USB2 ports that you plug your standard HDD USB caddies into, the NSLU2 turns the 2 caddies into NAS.
my western digital usb enclosure is quite quiet.
freeNAS (http://www.freenas.org/index.php?option=com_frontpage&Itemid=22) ?
Quote from: NimrodYou don;t want much do you ;)
Are the HDDs NTFS or FAT32 ? Youll have problems getting a NAS caddy that supports NTFS !
I have a Linksys NSLU2 USB2 NAS hub thingy that does work ok with NTFS (Read Only). It has 2 USB2 ports that you plug your standard HDD USB caddies into, the NSLU2 turns the 2 caddies into NAS.
Nope not much at all :lol: :lol: :lol:
theyre all NTFS atm,
but formating shouldnt be a problem, got enough space free to juggle the data :D
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,1873156,00.asp looks intersting, the multidrive nass listed are sata though :(
I take it freenas is a pc based solution ? id have to get the other machine up and working then :whoops:
supposed itd get it outta my room and the rest of the clutter though :lol:
http://www.broadbandstuff.co.uk/product_info.php?products_id=239
Can be had cheaper elsewhere
thanks for the linky, this looks like the sort of thing though
http://www.broadbandstuff.co.uk/product_info.php?cPath=109_198&products_id=449&osCsid=dd2aacc4626e77618db98c64d7b8f4ef
one or two IDE HDDs, network attached
bit odd that it only supports w2k, winxp and w2k3 though...... hmmm
ill have a bit more of a dig about when i get home :D
thanks for all the ideas so far lads (and lasses?) :D