Controllers: Spindown Support
Posted: Fri Nov 02, 2007 12:02 pm
I've been having fun with my PC's spindown support :) Using an A7V8X board with 3 different controllers and WinXP SP2. Found by experimentation that the BIOS must be set to spin drives down (after any time) and also Windows must be set (to the desireable time). If either is not set, no spindown occurs.
I have six drives running on the three controllers. Using careful file-copy on the same drive probing, I have determined which drives will spin down after the 1-minute idle timeout I've set in Windows' Power Options.
I accomplished this test by first waiting for the timeout; when I heard all the drives spin down, I then navigated to the root of the test drive and started duplicating a folder by CRTL key and drag-and-drop to the same drive, thus avoiding spinning up other drives.
In the list below, each line is one physical drive, listing the partitions on it first, then the verified spindown, and finally its controller. Drives in BOLD spun down, others didn't.
[C,I]....NO.....{Bus Number 0, Target ID 0, LUN 0} [SiI3114]
[E,H]...NO.....{Bus Number 1, Target ID 0, LUN 0} [SiI3114]
[F]......NO.....{Bus Number 3, Target ID 0, LUN 0} [SiI3114]
[D].....YES...{Location 0(0)} [VIA Busmaster IDE Controller]
[L].....YES...{Location 0(0)} [VIA Busmaster IDE Controller]
[P].....YES...{Bus Number 0, Target ID 0, LUN 0} [Promise 1+0 Stripe/RAID0]
Conclusions
Silicon Image SiI3114 SATA Controller: NO: Driver: Silicon Image: 1.0.15.0
VIA Bus Master IDE Controller: YES: Driver: Microsoft: 5.1.2600.2180
Win XP Promise FastTrak 376: YES: Driver: Promise: 1.0.0.8
It seems that, excepting the FastTrak, Windows universally supports standard IDE controllers, and has much less support for spindown on SCSI controllers. It appears that each controller (and driver combination) must be tested on a case-by-case basis to determine its spindown capability under Windows.
In the case of the FastTrak, it is a dual SATA plus one IDE channel controller, integrated on the board. The single drive plugged into it is coincidentally IDE... I could plug a SATA drive into it but am too lazy. Also it has to be configured for RAID to make a drive show up, and my SATAs are full of data, so I don't want to risk it being wiped.
I do feel that it is safe to assume that all controllers which show up in Device Manager under "IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers" will work, and that only some which show up under "SCSI and RAID controllers" will.
I've just purchased a VIA VT6410-based two-channel IDE controller from eBay, to verify the proposition. It will be tested on an IDE drive plugged in and held in my hand outside the case, for quick & easy verification.
If the IDE controller works with spindown, I'll be removing all my SATA drives and replacing them with IDE. The goal is to spin down every single drive in the machine while watching video at night.
I have a Gigabyte iRAM ramdisk with 1 GB in it which I will be upgraded to 4 GB today. The current 1 GB is being used by a pagefile; the extra 3 GB will be partitioned and used to store files for media playback, allowing the HDDs to be inactive and thus spun down. Each evening before starting movie nite, I just use my handy SendTo shortcut to send each file in turn from my storage drive to the iRAM.
Of course the boot is usually kept spun up regardless due to Windows' constant reads/writes. The next step is to replace this drive with flash SSD or a flash RAID. Since I'm using only 5 GB it will be easy.
I hope others can add to the list of controllers (and the driver source:version used!) which are know to work/not work with WinXP's spindown feature. If you post this information, please also post whether the driver shows as an IDE controller or SCSI/RAID controller in your Device Manager.
I have six drives running on the three controllers. Using careful file-copy on the same drive probing, I have determined which drives will spin down after the 1-minute idle timeout I've set in Windows' Power Options.
I accomplished this test by first waiting for the timeout; when I heard all the drives spin down, I then navigated to the root of the test drive and started duplicating a folder by CRTL key and drag-and-drop to the same drive, thus avoiding spinning up other drives.
In the list below, each line is one physical drive, listing the partitions on it first, then the verified spindown, and finally its controller. Drives in BOLD spun down, others didn't.
[C,I]....NO.....{Bus Number 0, Target ID 0, LUN 0} [SiI3114]
[E,H]...NO.....{Bus Number 1, Target ID 0, LUN 0} [SiI3114]
[F]......NO.....{Bus Number 3, Target ID 0, LUN 0} [SiI3114]
[D].....YES...{Location 0(0)} [VIA Busmaster IDE Controller]
[L].....YES...{Location 0(0)} [VIA Busmaster IDE Controller]
[P].....YES...{Bus Number 0, Target ID 0, LUN 0} [Promise 1+0 Stripe/RAID0]
Conclusions
Silicon Image SiI3114 SATA Controller: NO: Driver: Silicon Image: 1.0.15.0
VIA Bus Master IDE Controller: YES: Driver: Microsoft: 5.1.2600.2180
Win XP Promise FastTrak 376: YES: Driver: Promise: 1.0.0.8
It seems that, excepting the FastTrak, Windows universally supports standard IDE controllers, and has much less support for spindown on SCSI controllers. It appears that each controller (and driver combination) must be tested on a case-by-case basis to determine its spindown capability under Windows.
In the case of the FastTrak, it is a dual SATA plus one IDE channel controller, integrated on the board. The single drive plugged into it is coincidentally IDE... I could plug a SATA drive into it but am too lazy. Also it has to be configured for RAID to make a drive show up, and my SATAs are full of data, so I don't want to risk it being wiped.
I do feel that it is safe to assume that all controllers which show up in Device Manager under "IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers" will work, and that only some which show up under "SCSI and RAID controllers" will.
I've just purchased a VIA VT6410-based two-channel IDE controller from eBay, to verify the proposition. It will be tested on an IDE drive plugged in and held in my hand outside the case, for quick & easy verification.
If the IDE controller works with spindown, I'll be removing all my SATA drives and replacing them with IDE. The goal is to spin down every single drive in the machine while watching video at night.
I have a Gigabyte iRAM ramdisk with 1 GB in it which I will be upgraded to 4 GB today. The current 1 GB is being used by a pagefile; the extra 3 GB will be partitioned and used to store files for media playback, allowing the HDDs to be inactive and thus spun down. Each evening before starting movie nite, I just use my handy SendTo shortcut to send each file in turn from my storage drive to the iRAM.
Of course the boot is usually kept spun up regardless due to Windows' constant reads/writes. The next step is to replace this drive with flash SSD or a flash RAID. Since I'm using only 5 GB it will be easy.
I hope others can add to the list of controllers (and the driver source:version used!) which are know to work/not work with WinXP's spindown feature. If you post this information, please also post whether the driver shows as an IDE controller or SCSI/RAID controller in your Device Manager.