Spinning Up BackUp Drives ???

[captainfepa]

I am only minimally knowledgeable in the area of this inquiry, but I understand that PC hard disks spin up all together, rather than as they are accessed by application. (Is that even true?) Since hard drives are now a major practical means to back up other drives, I would like to lengthen drive life by spinning up one or more drives dedicated to backup only during brief scheduled backups at night, irrespective of routine operations at other times utilizing the other drives. I could put the backup drives on a separate (PCI-ATA) controller, but would prefer internal drives (standard ATA), probably running on MS WinXP. Does a separate controller in itself get me anywhere/everywhere? Is this already standard practice or commonly done? Any mods to do this short of rewriting the BIOS? Is it practical?

[Marsden11]

Why?Turn the power on and your drives spin up. Turn the power off and your drives spin down. That is pretty much what you have.You could have a computer full of controllers and they all obey power on and power off.Stick a removeable drive bay in. Pull the drive out after you do your backup. Stick it back in when you want to back up.Will your drive last longer starting and stopping all the time or will it run for years with an occasional reboot every now and then? YMMV

[captainfepa]

I do not want to start and stop drives all the time -- I want to control only one drive (the backup drive) so as to disable it at all times except during a scheduled nightly backup. Thus, that single drive would be powered up once every day or two for, say, half an hour. This ought to prolong the drive life. And I want to control it by a software scheduler - not by removable carriers, electromechanical switches, etc. Since drives can be put into sleep/hibernation by software, I would think it should be possible to keep one drive in such a state at all times except when it is being required for a scheduled backup. My understanding is that standard WinXP O/S treats all drives together when the system is set to control drives after periods without access, or in sleep/hibernation. I simply want one drive to be managed separately. I know that some cards provide expanded management of read/write control on selected drives, intended mostly for public-use environments where the entire s/w can be quickly reloaded from a secure/pristine drive to an active one after a user has bollixed the system, but I do not believe that these cards actually spin down the pristine drive during the very long periods when it is not in use.

[akorvemaker]

I think there is an option in Windows to do what you want. In the Control Panel there should be an option for Power management or something like that (it may vary depending on the version of Windows). In there are options for stopping disks after a period of non-use (low-power mode). Set this number for something relatively long (30+ mins). It will affect all your drives, but if you select a long enough time it should keep your main drive from starting and stopping constantly. You backup drive should start up when needed and power down a while after it's done its work.I have these options on my laptop running Win95b. I assume later versions of Windows also have them. What version are you running?

[captainfepa]

Yes, WinXP can manage drive power, but to all drives at once as I understand. And there are special controllers (eg Koutech Reborn card) to limit access to drives/partitions to protect their data by keeping them essentially off-line without special passwords; these are used to keep a drive ready as a pristine master from which active drives can be reloaded when infrequently corrupted, as in a school setting. But I do not believe the latter manage drive power as well as access. But if you are going to keep a drive running as a spare from which to reload the active drive every couple of days, why not keep it basically hibernating/sleeping until needed for longer life? (Certainly Win O/S power management set to 30 minutes will keep drives cycling more frequently than enforcing by s/w schedule a rule like 'Power Drive J Only From 2AM to 2:30AM'.) My question is essentially the same as the school scenario, but the reverse in data direction. The more I can keep a specified drive untouched (both as to access and as to power) the safer it should be (provided the backup to it is done when data is assumed to be stable) and the longer it should last. I would like confidence that the designated backup will be around longer than the others and will have less opportunity for corruption. I do not want to add reliability by mirroring because I simply want to use a single extra unmatched drive on hand, and this would not in itself lessen likelihood of corruption anyway. I do not want to turn drive-cable switches or pull trays because I am not reliable, am not around from 2-2:30AM, and this is physically risky besides.

[captainfepa]

A follow-up. I just spoke with a rep from Koutech and we came up with numerous additional advantages of individual drive power management in situations such as mine (scheduled backups to a protected drive) and the one for which their Reborn card was designed (system restores from a protected drive infrequent relative to system use). These include reduced noise and heat, and longer life of power supply, for example - as long as one knows that the protected drive will be used rarely (as on a nightly backup schedule). Also, this makes addition of a reserved protected backup drive much more practical in an environment of numerous PCs not having networked backup available: simply adding a drive entails costs of its replacement, power supply life, heat/noise, all of which basically disappear if we can assume that a drive powered very infrequently will have long life and minimal impact on maintenance.||The rep was enthusiastic enough to propose this to their factory engineers. Unfortunately, he did not know of specific solutions using presently available h/w or s/w. With backups to other local hard disks becoming the most practical route in many situations, I would think this would fill a need. But as I have said, I have no engineering knowledge whereof I speak.

[captainfepa]

Okay, this will be the last post I will add to this topic, since it seems to interest only myself. However, this is interesting: I was just at a seminar on SAN storage networks and happened to ask an EMC engineer this question. He replied that they had just decided to incorporate the ability to addressably power down individual drives and require codes or keys to power them on as a not-yet-announced feature of their forthcoming storage products. It seems the federal government is demanding this. Among their reasons, a (temporarily) dead drive is a VERY secure drive! On desktops, that translates to secure from viruses and command errors, but same difference as they say.

[jbredmound]

Hey, Capt! It seems intuitively correct! Why should all of my drives face "exposure" if I'm not using them?Layered defense...conservation of hardware...heady stuff!