I have three harddrives in my system, one of which is a 10,000 RPM WD Raptor. As such, since my computer is on 24/7 running DC programs, I like to cut its power use as much as possible. The two main, and easiest ways are having the monitor and harddrives automatically shut down by Windows Power Management. This works to a certain extent. My two data drives shut down and stay sleeping pretty well the whole time I am AFK. The drive that holds Windows, my pagefile, and Rosetta@home, only seems to sleep a small portion of the time. It seems every 20-25 minutes or so, the drive will sleep for about 3-4 minutes, then spin back up, and run for another 15-25 minutes. This continual spinning up puts unnecesary wear on the drive, and wastes electricity, maybe more then the whole process saves.
So is there a way to keep the drive sleeping longer? I've tried setting up a RAM disc and installing the DC program on it, but it doesn't seem to help much, I'm guessing since the ram disc or other programs are accessing the pagefile possibly. Is there some other way? I used to keep my pagefile on a separte physical disc then the DC program was installed to, but with that situation, I noticed both physical discs would spin up regularly.
A quick note, I'm running a UPS so I'm not afraid of keeping everything in RAM. If my power is out long enough that my system sucks the UPS dry, then it doesnt need to be running anyway.
I've heard that Vista should have better control with power management and its going to be less friendly towards letting random applications wake up hardware. But in the meantime, I'm looking for another possible solution.
So is there a way to keep the drive sleeping longer? I've tried setting up a RAM disc and installing the DC program on it, but it doesn't seem to help much, I'm guessing since the ram disc or other programs are accessing the pagefile possibly. Is there some other way? I used to keep my pagefile on a separte physical disc then the DC program was installed to, but with that situation, I noticed both physical discs would spin up regularly.
A quick note, I'm running a UPS so I'm not afraid of keeping everything in RAM. If my power is out long enough that my system sucks the UPS dry, then it doesnt need to be running anyway.
I've heard that Vista should have better control with power management and its going to be less friendly towards letting random applications wake up hardware. But in the meantime, I'm looking for another possible solution.