On Wed, Jul 18, 2001 at 02:37:50PM +0200, P Witte wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I have a question regarding the SMSQ/E Hard disk driver on my Q60.
> The issue is outlined in the correspondence quoted below. Any idea,
> anyone?
>
> > > >When my hard disk has stopped, and some access attempt
> > > > wakes it up again, it doesnt quite manage to spin up before
> > > > the file system beeps.
> > >
> > > The file system beeps? Never heard that before.
> <>
> > The fact that something beeps when the IOSS is unable to complete an
> > operation is obviously as new to you as to me, then. In fact I have
> > heard it before, namely in the demo version of QPC2: When you try to
> > save a file (writing to media has been disabled in the demo) you get
> > a "buzz" instead. I presume what this means is that although the
> > filesystem has accepted the transaction (the file is apparently
> > visible until the end of the session) it has not been commited to
> > the media! The problem is, that it is too late to return an error at
> > this stage as the call has already returned, so it buzzes instead to
> > alert the user to the condition.
> >
> > Ok, so back to my situation: When my drive has stopped, any
> > io-access to the drive starts it up again. Great! However, the
> > drive does not manage
> > to spin up in the time allotted before the IOSS gives up with
> > failure. Another < second would have done the trick. Is there
> > a way of changing this (a poke, if nothing else)?
uhmm, I assume you set the drive asleep using some of the sleep
commands. Don't do this! Life expectancy of drives is measured
in spinup cycles, not hours of idle operation. Modern drives will have
much better spinup behaviour than older ones but that doesn't
change much. Some time ago it was estimated that one spindown/spinup
cycle costs approximately as much life expectancy like 12 hours
of idle spinning. So it may improve power drain on laptops but is
definitely not what you want on a workstation.
Bye
Richard
