Re: Re: [OT] External Hard Disk

[Wayne <Wayne@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hiya Mal,
I would be in agreement with Phil on this. Using usb or firewire doesn't
mean that the OS wont be accessing the drives for what ever reason -
slim as maybe. Have you ever used a USB drive and seen the little
warning bubble that pops up saying 'please use the safely remove option'
before you yank it out?

I have found that - as windows knows its an external drive - you can use
an 'eject' command on the disk to do the same thing (works with an ipod
too - just for reference). Maybe use the pc to issue an eject command
before sending an x10 command to turn off the power? The reverse it true
then for power up, issue the x10 to turn on - wait about 15 seconds and
share the drive?

Just wondering off a little here - if you using the array to store
movies on - keep a copy of the good old 'pearl and dean' intro on your
hard disk to stream before your movie - that way you can do a 'send x10
to power disk' - play pearl and dean - share drive - play movie! then
the delay wont be as noticed and you can all sing along to the 'pap pap
- pap pap - pa pa pa pa - pap pa pap' to get you into the mood :-) (as
well as dimming the lights and opening the curtains over your screen !!)

Cheers
Wayne.



Mal Lansell wrote:
> I don 't see why it should be a problem - if the drives are connected
> via firewire or USB, powering off the array should be no different
than
> pulling a flashcard or unplugging a camera as far as the OS is
concerned.
>
> The main problem as I see it would be retaining drive letters and
having
> to re-share drives when they are turned on.  Hopefully that can be
> sorted programatically by the server.
>
> Mal
>
> Phil Harris wrote:
>
>
>> I would really really strongly advise against that ...
>>
>> ... any OS would be justified in getting its tits in a twist if
drives
>> simply "vanish" without being able to do any
housekeeping of its own
>> before
>> they are removed.
>>
>> Phil
>>
>>
>>> -----Original Message-----
>>> From: ukha_d@xxxxxxx <mailto:ukha_d%40yahoogroups.com>
>>>
>> [mailto:ukha_d@xxxxxxx <mailto:ukha_d%40yahoogroups.com>]
On
>> Behalf
>>
>>> Of Mal Lansell
>>> Sent: 01 September 2007 22:29
>>> To: ukha_d@xxxxxxx <mailto:ukha_d%40yahoogroups.com>
>>> Subject: Re: [ukha_d] Re: [OT] External Hard Disk
>>>
>>> I couldn't find a definitve answer on the win2k/eternal
spindown thing,
>>> but since the drives will be read only in normal use, I guess
I can
>>> just
>>> stick the array on an appliance module and power on/off when
needed.
>>>
>>> Mal
>>>
>>>
>>> Phil Harris wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>>> I'm not using RAID. The data is all video & music
and is static, so
>>>>> it's easy to create a duplicate set of disks to store
off-site. I
>>>>> can live with the occasional drive failure. Browsing
the collection
>>>>> will be handled via a database on another machine, so
I only need
>>>>>
>>> to
>>>
>>>>> spin up a drive to play something from it.
>>>>>
>>>> I don't use RAID either ...
>>>>
>>>> Phil
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>