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Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Software Issues and Discussion => Topic started by: Dragster on August 05, 2003, 05:20:10 PM

Title: Turn off feature/program for SCSI HDs?
Post by: Dragster on August 05, 2003, 05:20:10 PM

Hello folks,

just wondering if any of you know of a proggy on amiga that let's you turn off the motor of a SCSI harddrive after being idle for some time (e.g. 5 mins or so). There are some on aminet I've found but they only seem to support IDE hard drives (via scsi.device). I need something that works with a SCSI HDs attached to a blizzardppc scsi controller.

Any suggestions?

Thanks!

:)

Dragster

Title: Re: Turn off feature/program for SCSI HDs?
Post by: Floid on August 05, 2003, 07:24:48 PM

I'm really sleep deprived, but I think this might be a tough problem.  While I could be insane, I think IDE drives implement "APM" support (from the not-so-old Wintel spec), which basically means one command to set the mode, and then the drive will buffer/call a wait on new incoming commands and automatically spin up...

...meanwhile, SCSI has had the ability since roughly day one, in the form of the 'Stop Unit' and 'Start Unit' commands - but they require the *explicit* issue of a Start Unit to wake the drive back up.  Whether this is hard to do in AmigaOS, or it's simply that nobody's bothered (maybe someone's aware of a util?), I'm not qualified to say.

Spinning drives up/down can be a mixed blessing.  Constant rotation can be 'healthier' than spinning up/spinning down - most wear and tear gets its chance to occur then - on the other hand, you do run the risk of spinning all lubrication off the platters, and/or, say, losing the windings in your spindle motor to thermal stresses when you finally *do* shut the drive down/try to spin it back up.

Title: Re: Turn off feature/program for SCSI HDs?
Post by: zipper on August 05, 2003, 09:28:30 PM

I think I used Sleeper (sleeper20.lha?) with my Oktagon years ago.

Title: Re: Turn off feature/program for SCSI HDs?
Post by: pVC on August 05, 2003, 09:32:35 PM

I use Noisesaver with SCSI HDs. Can be found from Aminet. Sleeper works with SCSI too... At least both work with 1230scsi.device.

Title: Re: Turn off feature/program for SCSI HDs?
Post by: Dragster on August 05, 2003, 10:36:49 PM

Thanks FLoid, Zipper, PVC for the suggestions and ideas. I'll try the options tonite :)

Regards

Dragster

Title: Re: Turn off feature/program for SCSI HDs?
Post by: lionstorm on August 06, 2003, 07:25:34 AM

On IDE HD, I often got read/write errors when using this on/off feature so I decided to drop it to secure my WB.
Use dpms related utils to save your monitor.
Lio