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While watching video, HDD spins up, video pauses

1543 Views 3 Replies 3 Participants Last post by hoverdonkey, Sep 4, 2010

schmoppa

Discussion Starter · Jul 21, 2009

I have 3 HDDs in my Windows XP Pro HTPC (2.66 GHz Core 2 Duo, 2 GB RAM). Occasionally, several minutes into the video, video playback will pause on a frame (though sound from the video will continue as normal), and I'll hear a HDD start to spin up.

I don't know which of the HDDs is spinning up. I do know I have set the drives to spin down after a period of inactivity, which makes me think that the drive spinning up can't be the one with the video.

I understand the odd need to spin up a HDD, and I suppose I don't necessarily want to prevent the spin up, but how can I keep the video playing smoothly and without pause?

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hoverdonkey

· #2 · Aug 17, 2010

Quote:
Originally Posted by schmoppa /forum/post/16864954

I have 3 HDDs in my Windows XP Pro HTPC (2.66 GHz Core 2 Duo, 2 GB RAM). Occasionally, several minutes into the video, video playback will pause on a frame (though sound from the video will continue as normal), and I'll hear a HDD start to spin up.

I don't know which of the HDDs is spinning up. I do know I have set the drives to spin down after a period of inactivity, which makes me think that the drive spinning up can't be the one with the video.

I understand the odd need to spin up a HDD, and I suppose I don't necessarily want to prevent the spin up, but how can I keep the video playing smoothly and without pause?

Hello! I have this problem. Did you ever sort yours?

The only solution I can think of is to set the discs to never spin down, but that is not good (hot & noisy!)

Thanks

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Bojangles139

· #3 · Aug 17, 2010

what model is your hdd? if its WD, i think there are some firmwares you can use set to spin down after X second/minutes of idle.

thats what is happening, the some/most of the video gets buffered to the ram very quickly and then the hard drive becomes idle and spins down. once the buffered part of the video is used it, it has to spin up the hard drive again (not sure if the pause is caused due to nothing left in the buffer or if its the effort to actually spin up the hdd to cause the pause).

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hoverdonkey

· #4 · Sep 4, 2010

Video playback & timeshifting TV playback (in Media Portal) would freeze whilst hard disks would be heard spinning up. Play would resume after around 20 seconds. Sound would sometimes carry on. This would occur perhaps twice an hour. Video tearing was alo a problem during this time.

At the time I had Windows Aero disabled (in the belief that I was freeing up system resources). However, I read somewhere that disabling Aero could actually cause problems with video.

In hindsight, I should have just turned Aero back on to test, but I did a wider ranging cleanout operation instead. On other words, having Aero disabled is prime suspect, it was never proved.

Anyway, the problem WAS fixed after the following;

CLEANUP;

all spurious apps uninstalled

MediaPortal complete uninstall

SAF codec pack uninstalled

ATI drivers unsinstalled

ATI drivers clenaed up with Driversweep utility

REINSTALL;

latest ATI drivers resinstalled (Catalyst 10.8)

Windows Aero enabled

SAF4 installed

MP 1.1 final installed

Relevant gear;

OS - Windows 7 64 bit

Motherboard - GIGA byte GA-MA78GM-S2H Rev 1.0(AMD 780G chipset, with HD 3200 integrated graphics)

CPU - AMD 4850e

RAM - 2GB PC6400, 512MB assigned to integretaed graphics

1 system HDD and 2 data HDDs installed

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