jayvana@wpi.wpi.edu (Jay van Achterberg) (02/16/90)
I recently received the SCSI Saver INIT from comp.binaries.mac. I tried it out for a while, and found it to be a really neat idea (it parks hard disk heads after the drive hasn't been accessed for a period of time). I have been concerned about my hard drive shutting down and starting up too often, so I decided after about two weeks of using SCSI Saver that I was better off removing it. Because I leave my Mac on 24 hours though, I'd like to have a convenient means of powering down the one thing that I don't like leaving on all the time -- my hard drive. If the person who wrote SCSI Saver reads this (if someone knows the author, please try and get this message to the person -- thanks!), please consider the following modification to the program: Allow the auto-park after a period of time to be turned off. I always find that I do things that don't use the hard drive for my 60 minute time period, but as soon as I hear the hard drive park, I need to use it again! What would realy be nice is to have the heads park only if I hit a user-defined key combination. An FKEY would be fine, or a CDEV option like in Aask would be even better. I imagine myself using this feature very effectively. Basically, whenever I won't be using my computer for a while, I'll park my hard disk heads, just like a lot of people would choose to turn off their computers. Anyone have any comments on my line of thought here? Leave the computer on all the time so the hardware never recycles, but shut the hard disk down (mine actually stops spinning when SCSI Saver parks its heads) so I won't be worrying about my hard disk's hours coming closer to the dreaded MTBF hour all night long... Thanks in advance for any assistance! -Jay (jayvana@wpi.wpi.edu)
jayvana@wpi.wpi.edu (Jay van Achterberg) (02/18/90)
The following is a reply I got to my suggestions about SCSI Saver improvements: ONG_AC@jhuvms.hcf.jhu.edu (Albert C. Ong) writes: > Subject: SCSI Saver improvements > I like your suggestions for improving SCSI Saver. > One question I have is, does unmounting the HD by dragging the > hard drive icon into the trash do anything to prolong the life span of the > drive? > If you could post this question to the net, I'd be thankful. > I can't post reliably from my accounts. Thanks. Unmounting a hard disk doesn't do anything to the physical hardware of the hard disk (give or take a little more reading and writing prior to unmounting it). All it does is make the computer forget about the hard disk, while the disk keeps on spinning with the heads keep floating over your data. In fact, if the hard disk is your system disk, unmounting shouldn't be possible (right?), because the Mac won't let itself forget about the system disk. An INIT like SCSI Saver will help protect your hardware, though. What I initially downloaded it for was in hope that I could put my printer on the same table as my hard disk, and whenever I went to print something, I could park my hard disk heads so the vibration of the printer wouldn't damage the hard drive. (I have since moved the printer to another table.) -Jay (jayvana@wpi.wpi.edu)