"Martin 53N 1W" <ml_news@ddnospamddml1dd.co.uk.dd> wrote in message 
news:3b5mf.25214$uR.5541@newsfe7-gui.ntli.net...

f/fgeorge wrote:
[...]

The problem on most laptops used for Seti or Boinc or whatever program
that uses the hard drive all the time is that the hard drive fails.
Laptop hard drives do not have the same life expentency of a desktop
hard drive. People have even gone to ram drives to store the data in

Good points.

An alternative is to set the Boinc preferences so that the disk isn't 
written to so often. You could set this to be for an hour for example.

The latest laptop HDDs have a large RAM cache so that the OS can make 
multiple writes before the disk is finally spun up to transfer data.


All good detail,

Happy crunchin',
Martin

-- 
----------   OS? What's that?!               (Martin_285 on Mandriva)
- Martin -   To most people, "Operating System" is unknown & strange.
- 53N 1W -   Mandriva 10LE GNU Linux - An OS for Supercomputers & PCs
----------   http://www1.mandrivalinux.com/en/concept.php3

On my laptop (a Toshiba), theres some pre-installed custom power-management 
software. This gives different power profiles, different profiles for  power 
sources (mains/battery), screen brightness etc. and one of the options is 
HDD power down time.
If I'm running it from the mains, and I usually am which is probably another 
reason it get so hot, the hard disk is set to power down after 15 minutes, 
so I think I'll set boinc to write to the disk every 10.
I'm assuming it would write everything during a normal shutown, so I 
wouldn't lose the last 9 minutes of work if it had been 9 minutes since the 
last writing when I came to shut down?

Paul