[HiDefDon]

My HTPC has 5 hard drives. It doesn't make sense to have all 5 drives consume power, make noise, and wear out while only a single drive is typically used for hours at a time recording/playing a single TS file.


My Asus motherboard BIOS has a "HDD Power Down" option which causes a hard drive to be placed into a low power mode if the hard drive is inactive for a configurable period of time. I have set this option to "15 min" and the motherboard-attached hard drives do correctly enter low power mode after they remain inactive for 15 minutes.


My HTPC also has an SIIG UltraATA 133 PCI controller with 3 Seagate hard drives attached. None of the three hard drives which are attached to the UltraATA 133 PCI controller ever enter low power mode. The UltraATA 133 PCI product claims to include..."Full support ACPI (Advanced Configuration and Power Interface) for advanced system power management".


Does anyone know how to configure the UltraATA 133 PCI controller to place the hard drives in low power mode after they have been inactive for some period of time?


Thanks.

DonP

 

[bdraw]

Most of the time Windows Overrides the settings in your bios.


I would try to set them in your power settings in Control Panel.

 

[Karl Beem]

As already mentioned, use the power settings. However, in my experience drives attached to RAID controllers do not power down.


Karl

 

[Axel]

Don;


I have a similar set-up as yours: ASUS mobo and SIIG controller. My experience is like the previous posters already mentioned:, XP overwrites BIOS, Powersave can be set in the Control Panel. Mine (5 HDD total) fall asleep after 30 min - the way I have set it. I only have problems keeping them "awake" when accessing MyHD files from those disks over the network. I usually change the setting temporarily to "never".

______

Axel

 

[Hugo C]

Quote:

It doesn't make sense to have all 5 drives consume power, make noise, and wear out while only a single drive is typically used for hours at a time recording/playing a single TS file.

Like most components with moving parts - internal combustion engines, for instance - the most stressful part of a hard drive's life is the startup/shutdowns. Continuous running causes a lot less wear than frequent sleep/wake cycles, therefore, if you're worried about the lifespan of your drives it makes more sense to turn them on and off as little as possible. A bit of cooling may decrease thermal stress, but that's about all you can do.


If you want to reduce noise, many modern drives have some kind of acoustic management option or "quiet mode" which you can activate at the expense of a little performance. Or you could opt for a dampening enclosure, mount the drive on rubber grommets or in an elastic hammock to reduce transmission of vibrations to the case (biggest source of hard disk noise) etc.


Hard drives don't consume very much power on the grand scale of things. You'd save a lot more energy if you installed a couple of dimmer switches in your home.

 

[jcase]

Typically how do you enable "quiet mode"

 

[Hugo C]

It depends upon the drive, but usually it's a piece of software that changes drive firmware settings. For instance, Maxtor drives that support this feature need you to install a program called AMSET.EXE which is a DOS program using command-line switches.


Your best answer will be obtained by going to the website of your drive manufacturer and searching for "acoustic management".