Hard disks not turning off, what prog. could be causing this?

Sean · Post by **Sean** » Sun Apr 28, 2002 7:23 am

Ok, at night, I usually Run trillian, sorta AIM basically. My guess is this causes disk activity. Another program I run is Zone Alarm and MBM5. Do Zone Alarm and MBM5 also cause HDD activity? It's just nice to have ZA on at night to protect my computer..

Any ideas?

Thanks.

Post by **FlyingPenguin** » Sun Apr 28, 2002 8:03 am

ZA and MBM don't cause disk activity. However, if you have a lot of background apps running and depending on your memory size, Windows might occasionally access the swap file.

Are you using a stand alone Ultra DMA controller (like a Promise or Iwill card)? I've found that systems with RAID controllers (don't know about standard controllers) never put the drive in sleep mode.

Possible even some onboard controllers using the Highpoint chipsets work the same.

Sean · Post by **Sean** » Sun Apr 28, 2002 8:12 am

I have onboard Primise ATA100. It also has a raid chip, but I'm not using raid.

I will try leaving my computer alone w/o Trillian on and see if it turns off.

THanks.

BTW: I also have CPUCooL running, would that cause disk activity?

Post by **FlyingPenguin** » Sun Apr 28, 2002 5:16 pm

Even without using raid, I'm pretty certain drives connected to the Promise card won't go to sleep.

Schwartz · Post by **Schwartz** » Sun Apr 28, 2002 11:26 pm

Doesn't Zone Alarm log stuff? If it is logging stuff I would think there would be some disk activity.

Sean · Post by **Sean** » Mon Apr 29, 2002 6:38 am

That's what I thought.

Well, I closed all programs, and unhooked myself from the network. I don't know if it fell asleep or not, I will have to try during the day.