Urgh… the Toshiba MK3018GAS 2.5″ hard drive in my laptop keeps on spinning down every so often in spite of Windows XP being configured only to spin it down after 30 minutes of idle time. This is extremely frustrating.
Under linux, hdparm -S with a suitable time-out did the trick just marvellously. After having investigated this issue with several different diagnostic utilities, it turns out the disc has its own power management as well. However, Toshiba doesn’t offer any utilities to configure this, nor does my BIOS have the right stuff.
I think I’m looking for something like the IBM/Hitachi “Power Booster”, but for my Toshiba drive. If anyone has any other advice, I would gladly hear it.
Related posts:
This solution might take some trial and error to get right but it should work. All you need to do is tie a rubber-band to the harddrive’s spindle core. That way it will wind up the rubber band and after a set timeout (determined by the temperature-torsion response curve of your rubber band) your hard drive will slow down, probably to a grinding halt. To get up and running again, simply release the rubber band. Do not let it unwind backwards though or all your mp3′s might get played backwards at high speed.
Good luck.