Hard Disk Power Saving Mode on Trent and
PCL6000 based PCs
An issue has been seen on systems that use IBM SurePath BIOS version 2.0
whereby the setting of Hard Disk Power Saving behaves differently to earlier PCs.
The default BIOS setting for Hard Disk Power Saving in the BIOS is
[Enabled], which means that after a period of inactivity, the hard disk will spin down to
conserve power. This can however cause a noticeable pause of a second or so when the user
next accesses the hard disk. To overcome this feature, Hard Disk Power Saving mode should
be set to [Disabled].
There are however two additional complications to this.
The first is that if the overall Power Management Feature in the BIOS is
set to [Off] but Hard Disk Power Saving is still set to [Enabled], the disk will still
enter standby mode. To overcome this, you will need to set the Power Management Feature to
[On], then set Hard Disk Power Saving to [Disabled], then finally, reset the Power
Management Feature to [Off].
The second complication is that whatever the BIOS is set to, if the PC
is running Windows 95 version 4.00.950B and the setting in Control Panel / Power / Disk
Drives is set as in the illustration below (with the box ticked), the drive will enter
standby mode anyway. If the PC is running Windows 95 version 4.00.950B and you do NOT want
the drive to enter standby mode, you should remove the tick from the box in Control Panel
/ Power / Disk Drives.
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