how to stop unused disks from spinning...

hyderabadi

Member
Jan 16, 2003
68
0
0
I have three disks on my triple-boot --FreeBSD, Linux and Windows XP--system. At any given time, I am using only one of the OSes on one of the three disks. Each is big enough for my needs and I don't mount disk/s. My question is: Is there a way to stop other disks from spinning once one of the disks is selected for boot? I mean, if I am running FreeBSD, for example, I would like the disks with Linux and Windows XP to stop spinning (to reduce noise, to reduce power consumption and to extend the life of disks). Since these are internal IDE disks, I do not have the option of pluggin/unplugging of disks.
 

Matthias99

Diamond Member
Oct 7, 2003
8,808
0
0
From what I've heard, it seems that most consumer-level IDE controllers (like the cheap ones built into most motherboards) just don't support this, and if they do there's no good way to access it at the OS level. A RAID controller might, however, and it has to if it is a hot-swap RAID controller (although most of those are SCSI/SATA).

Edit: OTOH, Windows does let you turn off disks as part of its power management facility. I don't know if user-level programs can do that (or there's a way to force windows to do it on demand). No clue about doing this for Linux/UNIX.

Perhaps a better solution would be moving your boot partitions onto three partitions on the same disk? Then you don't have two extra drives kicking around in your box...
 

yelo333

Senior member
Dec 13, 2003
990
0
71
hdparm will do this under linux. also check your bios, as many have an option to spin down when not in use.
 

EeyoreX

Platinum Member
Oct 27, 2002
2,864
0
0
Unfortunately, AFAIK the power management features of Windows and the BIOS are "all or nothing" affairs. Either all the disks will be in power saving mode, or none of them. THe computer/OS has no real way of knowing that you won't eventually need to read/write data to/from the "extra" drives, so they are simply kept ready and waiting. Also, it is probably better, in the long run, for the drives to keep spinning vs spinning up and down and up and down again and again.

\Dan