From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 To: 9fans@cse.psu.edu From: "Douglas A. Gwyn" Message-ID: <3A847D8D.2F8B3876@arl.army.mil> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit References: <200102092232.f19MWMw10354@honti.mit.edu> Subject: Re: [9fans] Intel 815 question Date: Mon, 12 Feb 2001 10:24:17 +0000 Topicbox-Message-UUID: 60c5fd46-eac9-11e9-9e20-41e7f4b1d025 Andrew Pochinsky wrote: > I'm running Plan 9 on the Intel 815 chipset mb and noticed that it > does not turn off the hard drive light. The problem seems to be not > with the hardware (for lesser OSes do switch the light off when the > disk is idle). I'm wondering if anyone else had seen such a behaviour > and if it's something to worry about. It's actually the IDE controller light. I think what you really want to know is whether Plan9 spins down disk drives to conserve power, which helps on a notebook computer but not on a desktop. I think the answer is, No. Note that no harm is done to the disk drive by leaving it spinning, and in fact many computer engineers think that reliability is enhanced thereby.