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[rudyrednose]

I have a nice older Sony Z505 laptop in the living room, driving a good stereo system and running MC10.  It is connected via 100Base-T to a Media Server machine elsewhere in the house.

That setup is very nice.  Unobstrusive, classy with the very thin Z505 and its wonderful display.  

However, I would like to have the hard drive spin down on the laptop,  first for the faint noise,  but mainly to reduce wear and tear on the older machine.

I run Win XP Pro on the Celery 366 laptop, with 192MB RAM.  If Media Center is the only running application,  is it possible to spin down the HD ?

I would like not to have to invest in RAM for that older machine.  Is it possible is 192MB ?

What steps are necessary to eliminate disk access ?

Thank you

[Robert Taylor]

You should be able to use the Control Panel / Power Options feature to spin the hard drive down after a certain number of minutes...

[rudyrednose]

Did it, but it does not spin down when streaming, only when idling.
I suspect virtual memory swapping, but how to prevent swapping ?

Can it be done in 192MB ?

[Robert Taylor]

Try making the swap file a static size...

ie under
Control Panel / System / Advanced Tab / Performance / Settings Button / Advanced Tab / Virtual Memory / Change

Set the virtual memory (paging) file to the same initial and maximum size.

It might not make any difference, but it won't hurt. I do this on all my machines, and be generous with the space (I'd say for a 192Mb RAM machine, give it 768Mb), providing you have disk space aplenty.

You might also play with the Memory Usage setting. Try changing it between Programs and System Cache. It might help too...

Maybe it's the way MC streams files (maybe it "downloads" the track to temporary storage, and then plays it, so it has to write the temp file locally)...

[Chris Shaw]

However, I would like to have the hard drive spin down on the laptop,  first for the faint noise,  but mainly to reduce wear and tear on the older machine.

If you want to save noise, fine, but don't think you're extending the life of the disk. The most stressful operations for a hard disk are spinning up and down and this is when most failures happen. The expected lifetime of a hard disk is maximised by spinning it up once and never turning it off.

[rudyrednose]

Good point cjdshaw.
However, If I have my way, the HD will spin only to boot, load MC and then I stream music...

Isn't there a way to completely remove virtual memory ?

BTW according to the Sony manual, I cannot add more memory than the current 192MB.  It is maxed out...

[Chris Shaw]

I'm not sure about MC, but most software writes out at least some preferences regularly. These go in the registry which is stored.... on HD! This is a hanly little utility which allows you to see what's hitting the disk
http://www.sysinternals.com/ntw2k/source/filemon.shtml
It might help you trace what's stopping it spinning down.

If you really want to disable virtual memory, it tells you how here
http://www.tweakfactor.com/articles/tweaks/xptweak/3.html
but I wouldn't recommend it

[paulr]

!92 MB running Win XP Pro?   You really need more memory to be honest.

It is possible to disable virtual memory, but with only 192 MB, Windows XP probably won't even boot if you do it (it's in the control panel, system applet, advanced tab).  I *strongly* recommend against disabling it with your amount of RAM.  You may be left with an unbootable system.