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    Tools or settings which can turn off hdd after certain inactivity time

    Discussion in 'Windows OS and Software' started by jackluo923, Jun 13, 2009.

  1. jackluo923

    jackluo923 Notebook Virtuoso

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    What the title says.
    My hdd never spins down with the setting in power management.

    system, dwm.exe, svchost(localservicenetworkrestricted) are always writing very small amount of data to disk thus preventing from normal spindown.

    Are there any 3rd party tools or some setting which allows me to suspend or buffer these process which allows me to spin down the hdd?
     
    jackluo923, Jun 13, 2009
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  2. namaiki

    namaiki "basically rocks" Super Moderator

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    I would be very interested in an app like this since my laptop is always turned on and on the table next to my bed..

    Found a program called SuperCache which appears to do this (the program only runs on Windows XP though...), there is a demo available. The full program however, costs $130.

    Maybe this could be implemented via the use of a RAM disc, but there's gotta be an easier way....
     
    namaiki, Jun 13, 2009
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  3. MaXimus

    MaXimus Notebook Deity

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    Dunno if this helps, but I personally neveru s virtual memory (paging file), which means less hard disk activity / thrashing + higher performance. I have 4 GB RAM though
     
    MaXimus, Jun 13, 2009
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  4. jackluo923

    jackluo923 Notebook Virtuoso

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    I read through what supercache does and it looks like it's the same as eboostr3. Also, supercache looks like it's only for windows server 2003 32bit or 64bit.
     
    jackluo923, Jun 13, 2009
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  5. jackluo923

    jackluo923 Notebook Virtuoso

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    I have always used page file. I only have 1GB of ram on this netbook. I run photoshop, after effects and many similar programs on this netbook thus those pagefile and readyboost space are essential. Also, I have a lot of idle programs. I like to leave things such as outlook, internet explorer 8 and many programs open all the time thus inactive programs residing in the ram will be paged out after certain inactivity time. In my case, enabling readyboost and pagefile actually improve the performance of this netbook considerably.
     
    jackluo923, Jun 13, 2009
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  6. ScuderiaConchiglia

    ScuderiaConchiglia NBR Vaio Team Curmudgeon

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    Carefully planned and executed experiments (as opposed to the continued use of anecdotal "evidence") has clearly show there is NO, I repeat, NO user discernible improvement in performance attributable to turning off the page file.

    Gary
     
    ScuderiaConchiglia, Jun 13, 2009
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  7. Christoph.krn

    Christoph.krn Notebook Evangelist

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    Jackluo, on Linux systems, you usually have a program called "hdparm". This program is very powerful.


    If you use it wrong, hdparm will destroy your data.
    Especiall with all the "tweaking" going on here, I explicitly have to note that hdparm is not a "tweaking" software. Do not use it if you are unsure! Make backups! Read: Wikipedia:hdparm



    hdparm is now also available for Windows. It can be used to maually spin down discs and to specify a spin-down time. You can find more information about how to use hdparm for Windows, and other ways to make discs spin down on Windows, in the following thread on another forum:
    http://www.silentpcreview.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=37678. I highly suggest you to try out the other methods first. There are plenty of things that will keep discs spinning on Windows machines. You will have to turn off Suprefetch, Prefetch, automatic defragmentation and Readyboost (but I'm not sure about Readyboost) alongside others.
     
    Christoph.krn, Jun 13, 2009
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