From: Jens Arnold <arnold-j_at_t-online.de>
Date: Mon, 08 Mar 2004 20:42:12 +0100

Hello Linus

>> Some people reported that the disk is briefly spinned down
>> again during startup. I see this on an FM here, I'm not shure
>> about my recorder. The noise indicates there may be an
>> interruption, but the disk inertia still keeps it spinning.

> This is probably my fault. I corrected a bug that caused it to
> spin down too early (because some hard drives has a default
> STANDBY time of 30s). My code disables (or is supposed to
> disable) the STANDBY timer, but it obviously doesn't work as
> intended. I'll start working on this ASAP.

I also noticed it after mattzz pointed me to it in the chat. The
disk is put into standy for a very short time, did only realize
it when I put my ear directly on my box. It seems that some hard
disks (not mine) have an inbuilt safety function that keeps them
from spinning up again immediately after standby, so with these
disks the delay is longer (about 1 sec). You are using the
STANDBY command with a sector count of 0, this disables the
standby timer, but it also puts the drive into standby mode:
"This command causes the device to enter the Standby mode. _If_
the sector count register is non-zero..." (ATA specs).
Obviously there is no way to set the standby timer value without
actually causing the drive to enter Standby mode.

Regards, Jens

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Received on 2004-03-08