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From: jayvana@wpi.wpi.edu (Jay van Achterberg)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: SCSI Saver Improvement Requests
Message-ID: <8370@wpi.wpi.edu>
Date: 15 Feb 90 19:13:33 GMT
Reply-To: jayvana@wpi.wpi.edu (Jay van Achterberg)
Organization: Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Worcester ,MA
Lines: 35

I recently received the SCSI Saver INIT from comp.binaries.mac.  I tried it
out for a while, and found it to be a really neat idea (it parks hard disk
heads after the drive hasn't been accessed for a period of time).

I have been concerned about my hard drive shutting down and starting up too
often, so I decided after about two weeks of using SCSI Saver that I was better
off removing it.  Because I leave my Mac on 24 hours though, I'd like to have
a convenient means of powering down the one thing that I don't like leaving
on all the time -- my hard drive.

If the person who wrote SCSI Saver reads this (if someone knows the author,
please try and get this message to the person -- thanks!), please consider
the following modification to the program:

	Allow the auto-park after a period of time to be turned off.  I always
	find that I do things that don't use the hard drive for my 60 minute
	time period, but as soon as I hear the hard drive park, I need to use
	it again!

	What would realy be nice is to have the heads park only if I hit a
	user-defined key combination.  An FKEY would be fine, or a CDEV option
	like in Aask would be even better.  I imagine myself using this
	feature very effectively.  Basically, whenever I won't be using my
	computer for a while, I'll park my hard disk heads, just like a lot
	of people would choose to turn off their computers.


Anyone have any comments on my line of thought here?  Leave the computer on
all the time so the hardware never recycles, but shut the hard disk down
(mine actually stops spinning when SCSI Saver parks its heads) so I won't
be worrying about my hard disk's hours coming closer to the dreaded MTBF
hour all night long...

Thanks in advance for any assistance!
					-Jay (jayvana@wpi.wpi.edu)