Re: AHCI power saving (was Re: Ten hours on X60s)

[Valdis.Kletnieks@vt.edu]

On Mon, 13 Nov 2006 10:48:53 EST, Jeff Garzik said:
> Andi Kleen wrote:
> >> Therein lies a key problem.  Turning on all of AHCI's aggressive power 
> >> management features DOES save a lot of power.  But at the same time, it 
> >> shortens the life of your hard drive, particularly hard drives that are 
> >> really PATA, but have a PATA<->SATA bridge glued on the drive to enable 
> >> connection to SATA controllers.
> > 
> > How does it shorten its life?
> 
> Parks your hard drive heads many thousands of times more often than it 
> does without the aggressive PM features.

I've heard tell that the controller chip chews almost as much power as
the drive motor does - is there an option that says "Controller take a
snooze till we wake you up, but leave the drive spinning"?

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