Re: Re: [OT] External Hard Disk

[Mal Lansell <mal@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

I know about the "safely remove" thing, but I thought that
it's only
needed to prevent problems if you pull the plug while writing to the
disk.  Since this is to be used as a media source, I should only ever be
reading (unless doing maintenance), in which case a powering off should
be safe.

However, I'm moving away from this idea now.  I had been thinking of
saving power by going to the mini-itx route, but it's just a load of
hassle and all the nice rackmount cases I planned to use would wipe out
any electicity savings.  I've seen that Abit do motherboards with 10
sata connectors, so that plus a low-end Core2Duo in a full tower case
should do the trick and sort the spin-down issue at the same time.

As for Pearl and Dean - I thought of doing that to add to the home
cinema "experience", but I could do with some of those classic
cinema
adds too - anyone know if any are available?

Mal


Wayne wrote:

> 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.
>
>
>
>