[mythtv-users] Using HDParm to Spindown Hard Drives

[Greg Woods]

On Tue, 2008-09-09 at 15:12 -0700, Scott Kidder wrote:

> [root at mythtv mythtv]# fgrep "IOBOUND" mythbackend.log*
> 2008-09-09 15:00:18.393 TFW, Error: Write() -- IOBOUND begin cnt(9400)
> free(4535)
> 2008-09-09 15:00:22.325 TFW, Error: Write() -- IOBOUND end
> 2008-09-09 15:00:22.341 TFW, Error: Write() -- IOBOUND begin cnt(9400)
> free(8959)
> 2008-09-09 15:00:22.347 TFW, Error: Write() -- IOBOUND end

I get these too. One thing I have also noticed is that just before every
half hour, something happens that causes one of the drives to spin up.
This is very noticeable because whatever I am watching freezes for a few
seconds, while the disk activity light is hard on (normal for when a
drive spins up, as opposed to flickering like it would for heavy disk
activity). I haven't been able to find anything obvious that would be
causing this (i.e. cron jobs). Is there something that mythbackend does
every half hour?

--Greg