Jerome Werner wrote:
Also, what are the consequences of spinning down for the lifetime of my laptop's hdd (hitachi 20gb)? Is this good for it or does it take a toll? I understand that it saves energy, but what's the toll on the overall computer life? I heard some hdds only have a number of spin downs in their lifespan.
Well, for what it's worth, I believe the BIOS default of my Dell laptop was something like a 5 minute wait before spindown on the hard disk. But then maybe that's why they are big on selling you those 3-4 year warranty packages.
Yes, these things take a toll, but I don't think it is something that you need to worry about.
Consider how many hours per day you will operating your laptop on battery power. Probably, it will be something like 1-4 hours, yes? That isn't very much in the greater scheme of things.
So, perhaps the best solution is to only enable a short spin down and short screen lamp off time when you are on battery, and alter this behavior for when you are running on AC.
Or perhaps you could purchase a second battery back instead, and set your harddrive free to run as it likes.
dircha