24 Mar
2010
24 Mar
'10
6:19 p.m.
On Wed, Mar 24, 2010 at 10:16:10PM -0000, Andrew Burton wrote:
----- Original Message -----
From: "Alexander Schreiber" <als at thangorodrim.de>
To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts"
<cctalk at classiccmp.org>
Sent: Wednesday, March 24, 2010 2:45 AM
Subject: Re: Leaving computers on... (was Re: Disc analyser news update)
The datasheet should have that number.
There are several things that kill machines on powerup, among them
- electrical surges
- thermal changes
- for hard drives, especially older ones running for a long time,
stiction (having the heads stick to the platters)
- running out of power cycles
The last one is/was an issue for laptop drives, as they are specified only
for a limited number of powercycles. With very aggressive power management
shutting them down/powering them up every few minutes, that number isn't
as large as one might think.
Limited number of power cycles? Is there any way to know what this figure
started off at?
Basically any SATA drive (and most SCSI ones, but with less data) made these
days supports SMART, which contains quite a few useful bits of data, among
them such things as start/stop count, power on hours, reallocated sector
count ... although apparently with some (especially older) drives, not all
of that data is reliable.
And better yet, a way to reset it? :)
Time travel?
Regards,
Alex.
--
"Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and
looks like work." -- Thomas A. Edison