Sagetv and disk spin down?

[mohanman]

Hey guys,
I have a 160gb internal hard drive, and a 500gb lacie usb hard drive that I use to store the tv shows. I have noticed that when not using sagetv for extended period of time, the system continues to spin the hard drives despite not being in use.
Any work around this to save heat and energy as well as expand disc life? Also does anyone think that a usb 2.0 hard drive is okay to use in sagetv (recording/playing back hdtv), i havent really noticed too much stuttering?

Thanks
Mo

[Opus4]

Try disabling the option to regularly rescan import dirs in Detailed Setup -> Customize.

- Andy

[mohanman]

I have had that disabled for sometime. I also made sure nothing else was running in background. Any other suggestions would be appreciated.
Thanks
Mo

[MeInMaui]

Originally Posted by mohanman

I have had that disabled for sometime. I also made sure nothing else was running in background. Any other suggestions would be appreciated.
Thanks
Mo

Are you running Dirmon or comskip monitor? I know that Dirmon checks your drives every 1+ minutes (depends on settings) to see if there is anything to process. I'm not sure about comskip monitor.

Aloha,
Mike

[mohanman]

I think I am just going to reformat everything, intall vista and start from scratch and see what happens

I got all day anyway.

Thanks
Mo

[Goodspike]

I was thinking the customization that shows free disc space--that probably periodically checks the drive.

[snipeman]

Have you tested the system's ability to spin down the drives when Sage isn't running at all? Sometimes Windows can be really flakey about power management stuff. Sometimes it just plain doesn't work.

Also, I'd warn against too much spinning down and spinning up of hard drives. You might not extend their life as you wish. Don't set the spin down timer too short - I like a longer setting - like 3 hours or so.

Of course a hard drive spun down won't make heat in your system, and that is always good. My media server has 6 hard drives, but only 2 or 3 are spinning at any one time.

[mohanman]

That is why I havent quite been a windows fan lately. Trust me guys, I have been working with windows forever, and I was addicted to Microsoft, but os/x is like ten times better. I just wish they had more software support.

Thanks for all the advice, will try what you guys recommended.

[mohanman]

Hey guys, I noticed in my sagemc details menu under advanced there is a power option button. One of the options under that is the frequency sage should recheck itself. The default is 30 seconds.
Should I mess with that?? What if I increase it to lets say how ever many secnds there are in a day (24 hour period)?
Thanks

Mo

[Opus4]

It would help to mention the STVand/or customizations you are using in your first post. Since you say you are using SageMC, then try using the default STV w/o any customizations or plugins at all, including the disk space bar mentioned above. If your drive will spin down that way, then check about your customizations in that section of the forum. If it still wont work with a default setup, then you can check further settings after making sure that it works when SageTV isn't running at all.

- Andy

[mohanman]

You know what, I bet you it is that disk bar utility thingy.
I am going to disable that tonight and let you know

Mo

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by Opus4

Try disabling the option to regularly rescan import dirs in Detailed Setup -> Customize.

- Andy

Here's a question, what are the side effects of that? I'm guessing Sage won't automatically find new imported media? No new "folder.jpg"s?

[Opus4]

Originally Posted by stanger89

Here's a question, what are the side effects of that? I'm guessing Sage won't automatically find new imported media? No new "folder.jpg"s?

It wouldn't find new imported media unless you manually start a new scan. Oh, and a scan would occur every time SageTV (or the service) restarts on the server.

I don't know if it would find new thumbs w/o a new scan, but if it would, it might need to be for a file for which it hasn't tried to load a thumb since it was last started. I don't know the internal coding rules about that.

- Andy

[SubaruWRX]

Originally Posted by snipeman

Also, I'd warn against too much spinning down and spinning up of hard drives. You might not extend their life as you wish. Don't set the spin down timer too short - I like a longer setting - like 3 hours or so.

Not to take off from the thread but I have the same question but it's the other way around.. I brought a 160GB WD external hard drive about 4 months ago.. what bothers me is it seems like it's programed to shut off on it's own after 5 min of nothing using it.. well thats fine sort off...

But the issue is when I say go to my Computer and it needs to get the total free space and all.. My pc hangs for like 3-4 secs while the drive spins up to speed which I find annoying.