🚀 go-pugleaf

If you've got a high end Panasonic notebook, or perhaps any
notebook with a Hitachi ( 1Gb ) drive in, do you have the same
problem as us?

Both Panasonic and Hitachi are supposedly looking into it, but
they haven't been forthcoming yet with any answers.


One of our products pauses when it accesses the HD.  I have spent a
bit of time tracking the problem  down and have come up with the
following way of reproducing a similar effect outside our product.

1. Load Smartdrive
2. Do a DIR.  This will fill up the cache and takes a little time.
3. Do another DIR.  This will briefly flash the HD light and do the
directory quite quickly, as it's cached.  There is no perceivable HD
activity.
4. Wait for at least 6 seconds.
5. Do yet another DIR.  There is quite a delay when the light is on and
the heads can be heard moving.

If I use a different DIR ( NOVELL DOS 7 XDIR or HDIR ) after the wait,
there is, as you would expect, no disk activity when doing the DIR.

If you do it without a cache, there is still the delay after 6 seconds
wait.

I've made sure all the power management is turned off ( the HD takes
about 3 seconds to be accessed when spun down ).  On other machines
DIR does flash the HD light, but there is no delay.

It would seem that after 6 seconds of inactivity, the drive needs to
reset it's self when next accessed.

Does anybody have any thoughts?




--

Steve Cargill
SteveC@bitmap-brothers.co.uk