Re: IDE spin-up improvement?

Trevor Johnson (trevor@jpj.net)
Thu, 28 May 1998 02:28:57 -0400 (EDT)


> > > [Kernel checks for hdc]
> > > - CDROM okay
> > > [Kernel checks for hdd]
> > > - hdd spins up (old Quantum 730MB, needs some additional seconds)
> > >
> > >
> > > Isn^t it possible to send a little command to the IDE drives
> > > causing them to spin-up some time *before* actually checking
> > > the drives?
> >
> > I use IDE (although I don't have an IDE CDROM) and my computer's hard
> > drives spin up before Linux even starts (I boot it off an IDE disk, in
> > fact).
>
> I don't know if you were making fun of the original poster but if you
> weren't I think he was speaking of a situation where his IDE drives go
> to sleep after a certain amount of idle time (hdparm -S)

Sorry if I came off that way. I just meant to point out to the fellow
that IDE hard drives normally (always?) spin up by themselves at boot
time. It looked to me as though that was the occasion he was talking
about, because he said the kernel was checking for several drives in
sequence--something it does then. I used to use "hdparm -S", and drives
only spun up when they were needed for reading or writing data--something
that isn't normally done in a quick sequence ordered by device. If it is
at boot time, maybe what he wants--apart from a less sluggish drive--is a
way to have the IDE driver read from his fastest (at spinning up) drives
first, giving the slower ones a little more time to get moving.
___
Trevor Johnson

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