How to put ethernet hard drive to sleep ??

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James

I have a Dell 8200. I want to use an external, ethernet drive, to use as a
file server on a home lan network.

I am hoping to leave this drive on all the time, but I don't want it
spinning when not in use . As I understand this (not an expert here) an
ethernet drive is connected to a router, not directly to the pc. Thus, the
"time management" and similiar controls inherent in XP are not available.

How can this be done, or can it be done at all ??

I will appreciate any tips !!

--James--
 
James said:
I have a Dell 8200. I want to use an external, ethernet drive, to
use as a file server on a home lan network.

I am hoping to leave this drive on all the time, but I don't want it
spinning when not in use . As I understand this (not an expert
here) an ethernet drive is connected to a router, not directly to
the pc. Thus, the "time management" and similiar controls inherent
in XP are not available.

How can this be done, or can it be done at all ??

I will appreciate any tips !!
Click to expand...

This is going to be down to the system you buy and its abilities. You're not
buying an "ethernet hard disk" even if that is what the box says, you're
really buying a very basic network file server. Like all servers, this will
have its own OS with its own abilities, and hopefully that would include
decent power management.

--
--
Rob Moir, Microsoft MVP
Blog Site - http://www.robertmoir.com
Virtual PC 2004 FAQ - http://www.robertmoir.co.uk/win/VirtualPC2004FAQ.html
I'm always surprised at "professionals" who STILL have to be asked "Have you
checked (event viewer / syslog)".
 
I find it cheaper to just use a PC. I own several 'two generation' ago
Dells that I have loaded up with storage, a gigabit card and XP. Work like
a charm. PC itself is in the $100-125 range, which is competitive with any
of the network storage offerings.

TOm
 
James said:
I have a Dell 8200. I want to use an external, ethernet drive, to use as a
file server on a home lan network.

I am hoping to leave this drive on all the time, but I don't want it
spinning when not in use . As I understand this (not an expert here) an
ethernet drive is connected to a router, not directly to the pc. Thus, the
"time management" and similiar controls inherent in XP are not available.

How can this be done, or can it be done at all ??

I will appreciate any tips !!

--James--
Click to expand...
Any device that you buy will have some sort of sleep mode built into its
firmware. Like Tom, I too use a little, low power system as a
file/email server. I went with a Via C3 processor (roughly a P3 800MHz)
that I bought from newegg which included a flexATX mobo (with integrated
video & network) for $60. From there I bought a small form factor case
and standard ATA HDD. I installed Linux (Fedora Core 5) and share
directories via NFS (I could use Windows Shares aka Samba, but the
performance sucks compared to NFS). The benefit of going with a full
system is it's not just a file server; as mentioned I use it as an email
server (I use fetchmail to collect all my email from yahoo, gmail,
school, etc. then serve it up via secure IMAP). I also share my music
over the local network via mt-daapd so any PC running iTunes can see it;
I use slimserver to serve my music over the Internet for listening at
work.
 
James said:
I have a Dell 8200. I want to use an external, ethernet drive, to
use as a file server on a home lan network.

I am hoping to leave this drive on all the time, but I don't want it
spinning when not in use . As I understand this (not an expert
here) an ethernet drive is connected to a router, not directly to
the pc. Thus, the "time management" and similiar controls inherent
in XP are not available.

How can this be done, or can it be done at all ??

I will appreciate any tips !!
Click to expand...

Going back to your original proposition, there are two schools of thought:
(1) There are only so many revolutions available so turning off the disk
extends its life, plus "if it ain't in use, turn off the juice" saves power.
The other idea is that it's the off/on cycling that's more damaging (like
with light bulbs), plus the power saving is miniscule.

We have one computer that runs 24/7. Almost all the others are turned off at
night. By actual measurement, IDE drives last about three years no matter
their duty cycle.
 
"By actual measurement, IDE drives last about three years no matter their duty
cycle." A good argument for SCSI drives? ... Ben Myers
 
How much does a SCSI drive cost per GB compared to IDE? Last time I looked,
SCSI was about $1 to $1.50/GB for larger drives (147 or larger), and IDE is
$0.50 to 0.75/GB. If the IDE is half the price per GB, a three year life
span doesn't seem so bad. Course, a nice SCIS RAID 5 or 10 array, that's
another story... :) Saved us a few hours of work (and probably some data
that wasn't being backed up) recently.

Clint
 
HeyBub said:
Going back to your original proposition, there are two schools of thought:
(1) There are only so many revolutions available so turning off the disk
extends its life, plus "if it ain't in use, turn off the juice" saves power.
The other idea is that it's the off/on cycling that's more damaging (like
with light bulbs), plus the power saving is miniscule.

We have one computer that runs 24/7. Almost all the others are turned off at
night. By actual measurement, IDE drives last about three years no matter
their duty cycle.
Click to expand...

I use a win95 system that's been spinning its HD continuously since 1996
(check the header to this message). SCSI drive.

Power is free in the heating season, if you heat with resistive heating,
by the way. Every watt winds up as a watt of heat in the end.
 
HeyBub said:
Going back to your original proposition, there are two schools of thought:
(1) There are only so many revolutions available so turning off the disk
extends its life, plus "if it ain't in use, turn off the juice" saves power.
The other idea is that it's the off/on cycling that's more damaging (like
with light bulbs), plus the power saving is miniscule.

We have one computer that runs 24/7. Almost all the others are turned off at
night. By actual measurement, IDE drives last about three years no matter
their duty cycle.
Click to expand...

3 years??? Since I work almost exclusively with much older computers, i
have a fair idea how long electronics will last. I've seen a living
hard drive pulled out of a 486 that had been "stored" outside long
term, in the mud, and weather. A very high ratio of 6 year old hard
drives are still alive (I don't usually go much older because they just
don't store enough). Hard drives freqently survive mishandling, being
stacked like bricks, sans astistatic bags and so on.

Chances are good that if you grab that hard drive out of a dead
computer of any age, and plug it into a live one, you can still read
the data.
 
Cost of the drive is one factor. Value of the data and time to recover from a
drive failure are others. One can argue that using an IDE drive is penny-wise
and pound-foolish... Ben Myers
 
Oh please. I thought better of you :)

If you look at MTBF numbers, current SCSI drives are NOT inherently more
reliable then current IDE drives (PATA or SATA).

Many SCSI drives are in arrays -- which provides the perceived reliability.

Don't go with the SCSI-mantra.

Tom
 
Ben Myers said:
"By actual measurement, IDE drives last about three years no matter their duty
cycle." A good argument for SCSI drives? ... Ben Myers
Click to expand...

No, a good argument for 5-year warranties and good backups. At the
3-year point you get a new drive for free, and since you have good
backups (or a simple RAID array) you don't lose any data. 8*)
 
Tom said:
Oh please. I thought better of you :)

If you look at MTBF numbers, current SCSI drives are NOT inherently more
reliable then current IDE drives (PATA or SATA).

Many SCSI drives are in arrays -- which provides the perceived reliability.

Don't go with the SCSI-mantra.

Tom
Click to expand...

Of course if performance is a concern, SCSI is the way to go; find me a
single PATA or SATA 15K RPM drive
 
Nicholas Andrade said:
Of course if performance is a concern, SCSI is the way to go; find me a
single PATA or SATA 15K RPM drive
Click to expand...

It's not about spindle speed. A SATA Raptor can put up spec numbers as good
as a 15K SCSI. It's not about specs either.

And this isn't a server group, remember? How many people here need that
performance.

Tom
 
Nicholas Andrade said:
Of course if performance is a concern, SCSI is the way to go; find me a
single PATA or SATA 15K RPM drive
Click to expand...

5 years ago you would have said 10K RPM, now the Raptors are out. n
another few years, who knows what we'll see?

Performance is about more than raw disk speed, which is more than
spindle speed, of course...
 
Tom said:
It's not about spindle speed. A SATA Raptor can put up spec numbers as good
as a 15K SCSI. It's not about specs either.
Click to expand...
Know of any sites, magazines, etc. that support this claim? We tested
both for DB oriented tasks at my previous job and the 15K SCSI's smoked
the SATA Raptors in terms of total throughput (this is on the same Sun
hardware with fibre connected StorEdge disk arrays using VXFS on both
sets of RAID-1 drives). The 10K SCSI drives also won out (esp. as load
increased), however their margin wasn't worth their premium in price.
And this isn't a server group, remember? How many people here need that
performance.
Click to expand...
I completely agree; I haven't used a SCSI drive in a home system in
nearly a decade.
 
3 years??? Since I work almost exclusively with much older computers, i
have a fair idea how long electronics will last. I've seen a living
hard drive pulled out of a 486 that had been "stored" outside long
term, in the mud, and weather. A very high ratio of 6 year old hard
drives are still alive (I don't usually go much older because they just
don't store enough). Hard drives freqently survive mishandling, being
stacked like bricks, sans astistatic bags and so on.

Chances are good that if you grab that hard drive out of a dead
computer of any age, and plug it into a live one, you can still read
the data.
Click to expand...

That's what I thought too. Three years? Unpossible!! :)
 
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