Thanks for your replies. Yes, that in fact is what is causing what appears to
be random switching to PIO mode. That's 3 minutes (lowest setting) from when
the kernel stops using the disk (per a Microsoft doc on it). That can happen in
a few minutes or hours, depending on what is going on.

I'd like to force one or the other off at my choosing, then when XP needs to
use it (which I can force by hitting the disk with a read) it will just spin
back up. I can then directly correlate action and symptom. Right now, it's just
a good guess, only confirmed by "it hasn't happened in a while now" with the
drives always on. ;)


On 3/30/2010 1:36 PM, Carl Denk wrote:
> In XP (Classic Menu)
> Start > Settings > Control panel > Power Options > Turn Off Hard Disks 
> (Many settings from Always On - 3 minutes)
> 
> On 3/30/2010 1:01 PM, Dr Skip wrote:
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