It's a laptop, so the PS is fixed, and the drive carriage has a pc board with
soldered connectors - no cables. So far, with drive always on, no problems. I
guess it could be power, but based on sound, I don't think both drives spin
down at the same time, yet it still happens when one spins up. With both AC and
battery on, one would think it would handle the 'surge'.

I _thought_ I heard kind of a sagging spin up with a different higher-draw
drive in there, but it could have just been the way it normally sounds. it
didn't have problems as a single drive, only when 2 are present. Still, what
would the sequence be if power sagged on spin up? I can't find a setting
anywhere in the registry or online to tell XP to wait longer for spin-up. I
assume there is a drive-ready indication and it would wait for that, then read,
but it's been a long time since I did PC hardware design. I'm a dinosaur... :(
 Yes, same as DVDs, etc. It works fine waiting for those.

The only Linux I've got for it is on live-CDs so far. Just 2 NTFS drives right now.

Of course there's the perennial debate on whether spinning the drive up/down
all the time or letting it run is better for the drive. Maybe I'm being forced
to do the best thing??? ;)


On 3/30/2010 1:55 PM, Carl Denk wrote:
> Another thought, is the power supply adequate. Even then if it's not a 
> energy saving power supply, might consider swapping it out. I did 
> recently and the Kiil-a-Watt said the new on 12 hours a day would take 2 
> or 3 years to pay the $70 cost for around 450 watts. The old one was 350 
> watts, and cheaper power supplies are out there, but they use a lot more 
> power.
> 
> XP should wait till there is drive ready, it does that also with DVD, 
> CD, floppies, etc. Might see what the reaction is with SATA connected, 
> but not power. SATA is supposedly hot swap. Maybe someone else can 
> comment on if it is safe to have SATA connected and plug/unplug the 
> power. The IDE and floppies have a drive ready signal, don't know how 
> SATA handles that.
> 
> Googled SATA Drive Ready, here's one
> http://www.mail-archive.com/linux-raid@vger.kernel.org/msg04257.html
> 
> Note possible bad cable issue!
> 
> On 3/30/2010 1:36 PM, Carl Denk wrote:
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