Can I have my secondary HD turned off by default at startup?

Hi!

I have one main HD, and one secondary HD that I wish to use for backups.
However in order to keep the noise and heat level down, I don't want the
secondary HD to be turned on other than at the times it's used to backup
data. So can I somehow configure my system to have the secondary HD turned
off by default, and only let it wake up on command when I'm about to backup
data?

Thanks in advance

John123 wrote in message
ws.com...

I have one main HD, and one secondary HD that I wish to use
for backups. However in order to keep the noise and heat level
down, I don't want the secondary HD to be turned on other than
at the times it's used to backup data. So can I somehow configure
my system to have the secondary HD turned off by default, and
only let it wake up on command when I'm about to backup data?

Yes, its technically feasible.

I dont know of anything that will do it tho.

Trivial to write one tho.

You can get pretty close by setting the spindown
time on that drive to as low as its possible to set it.

The minimum spindown time is 1 minute in my BIOS. However,
I'd like to not even have the drive spin up at all during startup.

Getting very anal retentive as far as noise and heat level is concerned.

Just minimise the number of boots and that will work fine.

I've yet to find a solution for this...

IBM IDE drives have a jumper prevent spin-up, which you can wire up to a
switch.

"John123" wrote in message
ws.com...
|
| The minimum spindown time is 1 minute in my BIOS. However, I'd like to not
| even have the drive spin up at all during startup. I've yet to find a
| solution for this...
|
|

On Sun, 29 Jun 2003 09:39:35 GMT, "John123" wrote:

Hi!

I have one main HD, and one secondary HD that I wish to use for backups.
However in order to keep the noise and heat level down, I don't want the
secondary HD to be turned on other than at the times it's used to backup
data. So can I somehow configure my system to have the secondary HD turned
off by default, and only let it wake up on command when I'm about to backup
data?

Thanks in advance

I added the following to

http://inet.uni2.dk/~svolaf/advancednotes.htm


Setting ATA disks to not spin up at power on


Newer ATA harddisks have a feature, which make it possible to set the
disk to not spin up at power on using software commands.

One problem is that some systems will hang at boot if a disk does not
spin up. If that happens there is no other work around than mounting
the disk in a system, which will boot with the disk present, and send
commands to disable the feature in that system.

In tests, a system with Award BIOS would boot with the disk on the
motherboard controller and the disk set to none in BIOS, but not with
the disk on a Highpoint Controller in the same system.

If the disk has a jumper setting for enabling the feature, it can be
tested if the system will boot by temporarily setting the jumpers to
nospinup.

Operating systems may not have features to start the disk, and mount
the partitions if the disk was not available at boot.

Using Findpart for DOS, a disk can be set to 'nospinup' using these
commands (example for secondary master):

set findpart=edit
findpart feature sm nospinup

To set the disk to 'spinup' at next power on:

set findpart=edit
findpart feature sm spinup

To spin up the disk, without changing the power on setting:

set findpart=edit
findpart feature sm spinupnow

The disk location codes for primary master, primary slave, secondary
master and secondary slave a pm, ps, sm, ss.

If a disk is accidently set to not spin up at power on, I guess it
could happen that no one would be able to figure out what is wrong.

--
Svend Olaf

On Sun, 29 Jun 2003 15:17:39 -0700, "Eric Gisin" wrote:

Content-Type: text/plain;
charset="Windows-1252"

Note that your messages will not arrive at some usenet servers because
you use a proprietary Windows character set.
--
Svend Olaf

"Svend Olaf Mikkelsen" wrote in message
...
| On Sun, 29 Jun 2003 15:17:39 -0700, "Eric Gisin" wrote:
|
| Content-Type: text/plain;
| charset="Windows-1252"
|
| Note that your messages will not arrive at some usenet servers because
| you use a proprietary Windows character set.
| --
I don't believe that. If so, shoot the stupid UNIX admin.

Anyway, OE has Internat Settings of Western European (ISO), not (Windows). I
see charset="iso-8859-1" in my posts.

On Mon, 30 Jun 2003 09:11:08 -0700, "Eric Gisin" wrote:

"Svend Olaf Mikkelsen" wrote in message
...
| On Sun, 29 Jun 2003 15:17:39 -0700, "Eric Gisin" wrote:
|
| Content-Type: text/plain;
| charset="Windows-1252"
|
| Note that your messages will not arrive at some usenet servers because
| you use a proprietary Windows character set.
| --
I don't believe that. If so, shoot the stupid UNIX admin.

Anyway, OE has Internat Settings of Western European (ISO), not (Windows). I
see charset="iso-8859-1" in my posts.


Get Agent. It's worth it.

An excellent piece of software in a world of bloatware.

wrote in message
...
| On Mon, 30 Jun 2003 09:11:08 -0700, "Eric Gisin" wrote:
|
| Get Agent. It's worth it.
|
| An excellent piece of software in a world of bloatware.
|
Agent is the most overrated, piece of ****, newsreader out there.

It can't even implement MIME properly, and the assholes using Agent blame OE
for Agent's braindamage.