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Ms. Julie
08-02-2005, 09:09 AM
This is a big and perplexing issue for me. I hope the gurus here can help me out.

In the user options in the power setting, I can choose that when the computer is plugged in that the hard drive is never turned off. I would assume that that would mean that the hard drive would never power down; that is, that the hard drive would keep spinning even after several minutes of not accessing the hard drive.

For me, that is not the case. It does not matter what setting I have chosen for the power management, and it does not matter that the machine is plugged in, after about 50 seconds of nonaccess, the hard drive powers down. I work in an extremely quiet environment, and I can hear the hard drive powering down. It does not matter if I am actively using the computer, as long as the program I am using has not accessed the hard drive in the last 50 seconds -- the hard drive stops spinning. Then, as I am working, and the program needs to access the hard drive, I can hear the hard drive powering up and I have to wait for it you seconds for work on the program to continue.

What I'm wondering is whether this is a function of the Intel Centrino chip or something.

Perhaps I am fundamentally misunderstanding what the power setting management can do. I thought that if I put it at the setting to keep the hard drive from shutting down, that the hard drive would keep running.

I have a gateway M 275. I have sent it in for repair, and the motherboard checked out okay. I even convinced gateway to send me a replacement -- and it did the same thing, straight out of the box, right during the initial setup of Windows. If there is a ghost in my machine, it is not just my machine.

Many thanks in advance. Julie

alltp
08-06-2005, 06:59 AM
Your hard drive will only spin when software needs to access data. the power management that turns the drive off just saves battery and energy by taking it out of a standby mode.

To me, it sounds like everything is functioning normally.

jsco
08-06-2005, 02:44 PM
maybe you should look into replacing the hard drive. a different drive might be quieter than the one you currently have. this might not solve your problem though.

Bandito
08-07-2005, 05:31 PM
Sometimes there are power management settings in the system BIOS. It's never been clear to me which settings take precedance, so it might be worthwhile to see how the BIOS is configured and if changing any settings there have an effect.

In my opinion, if set to no power savings, as the program says, the hard drive should not spin down. Something definitely doesn't sound right about all of this.

jkendrick
08-08-2005, 06:38 AM
Different OEMs have different power management utilities that allow varying degrees of control over the HDD power settings. I personally would not want the small drives of a Tablet spinning all the time.