2c Tip: Spinning down harddrives (WAS: Re: [TAG] 2 cent tip)

[Jay R. Ashworth]

On Sun, May 02, 2004 at 03:33:14AM +0100, Thomas Adam wrote:
> It's also worth noting that if one is using ext3, then the option of
> 'noatime' in /etc/fstab for all ext3 partitions should be used, since this
> will considerably reduce the amount of disk activity (the access time for
> files is not recorded then).
> 
> I have known instances where this command to spin the drive down fails,
> either because the journal is being read to every 5 seconds (this is
> default, see: man tune2fs to change it), or because noflushd is running.

Oh boy did I need to know *this*.

interestingly, my Toshiba almost never spins down.  The Compaq Armada
from which the drive was cloned (they're both RH7.3, ext3), on the
other hand, does.  Same hdparm settings and everything.

Curiouser...

Cheers,
-- jra
-- 
Jay R. Ashworth                                                jra at baylink.com
Member of the Technical Staff     Baylink                             RFC 2100
The Suncoast Freenet         The Things I Think
Tampa Bay, Florida        http://baylink.pitas.com             +1 727 647 1274

        "They had engineers in my day, too."  -- Perry Vance Nelson