On Thu, 24 Oct 2002 theodore.schulze@us.army.mil wrote:

I don't think that it is entirely true that it is due to ReiserFS. I use ReiserFS on my laptop (Sony Vaio PCG-C1XS) running Slackware 8.1, and using the advice found in the Battery-Powered-HOWTO, I was able to set the harddrive to spin down after 15 seconds and remain spun down for minutes at a time (I don't recall the setting I have it at).

I would recommend trying the suggestions in the HOWTO, or seeing how the suggestions would be implemented under SuSE. You should also take a look at the man pages for hdparm.

Good suggestions, but for recent IBM "Travelstar" discs they claim that the battery life of a laptop can be up to 8% more if you let the drive decide when to enter one of its four power saving states, versus a scheme based on a fixed delay after the last disc access. I find that I rarely have to wait for the disc to spin up, yet power consumption seems not to be excessive. For more details on my disc see http://www.math.ucla.edu/~jimc/insp4100/details.html#disc Also, frequently starting and stopping a disc, when the heads actually touch the surface when stopped, shortens the life. The newer "Travelstar" models lift the heads, like discs are *supposed* to do :-) This alone gives almost as much power saving as turning off the motor. James F. Carter Voice 310 825 2897 FAX 310 206 6673 UCLA-Mathnet; 6115 MSA; 405 Hilgard Ave.; Los Angeles, CA, USA 90095-1555 Email: jimc@math.ucla.edu http://www.math.ucla.edu/~jimc (q.v. for PGP key) --g9PJqPPM002112.1035575545/simba.math.ucla.edu-- ReSent-Date: Fri, 25 Oct 2002 13:09:20 -0700 (PDT) ReSent-From: Jim Carter ReSent-To: suse-linux-e@suse.com ReSent-Subject: Re: [SLE] HDD activity ReSent-Message-ID: On Thu, 24 Oct 2002 theodore.schulze@us.army.mil wrote:

I don't think that it is entirely true that it is due to ReiserFS. I use ReiserFS on my laptop (Sony Vaio PCG-C1XS) running Slackware 8.1, and using the advice found in the Battery-Powered-HOWTO, I was able to set the harddrive to spin down after 15 seconds and remain spun down for minutes at a time (I don't recall the setting I have it at).

I would recommend trying the suggestions in the HOWTO, or seeing how the suggestions would be implemented under SuSE. You should also take a look at the man pages for hdparm.

Good suggestions, but for recent IBM "Travelstar" discs they claim that the battery life of a laptop can be up to 8% more if you let the drive decide when to enter one of its four power saving states, versus a scheme based on a fixed delay after the last disc access. I find that I rarely have to wait for the disc to spin up, yet power consumption seems not to be excessive. For more details on my disc see http://www.math.ucla.edu/~jimc/insp4100/details.html#disc Also, frequently starting and stopping a disc, when the heads actually touch the surface when stopped, shortens the life. The newer "Travelstar" models lift the heads, like discs are *supposed* to do :-) This alone gives almost as much power saving as turning off the motor. James F. Carter Voice 310 825 2897 FAX 310 206 6673 UCLA-Mathnet; 6115 MSA; 405 Hilgard Ave.; Los Angeles, CA, USA 90095-1555 Email: jimc@math.ucla.edu http://www.math.ucla.edu/~jimc (q.v. for PGP key) --g9PJqPPM002112.1035575545/simba.math.ucla.edu--