Hard Drive Question

When during boot up is the hard drive spun up? Is it on powerup or later in the bootup cycle?

Not sure precisely when, but I know it's at least either at or before the words "probing primary interface" appear in the boot up log on the serial port. And on my player, that happens within three seconds of power-on.

Why?

I was thinking that it would be beneficial to maybe have a low temperature setting in Hijack that would keep the player from booting if it was really cold. I seem to get a lot of Hard Disks Not Found when it's cold outside. After the player warms up some, it's fine. So I thought if we could stop the hard drive from spinning up when it's cold, it would be beneficial but if it spins up on power up then it's kind of a moot point.

I remember mark saying that at some point, he would integrate this feature into hijack. But i'm not positive

I seem to get a lot of Hard Disks Not Found when it's cold outside.

Depending on your definition of "cold", you might want to consider taking the player inside with you. Exposing the disk drives to extreme temperatures will shorten their life span.

Also, cold temperatures could exacerbate a loose solder joint on the IDE header if you happen to have this problem.

I usually do take the player inside but sometimes I forget. By "really cold". I mean below freezing, maybe in the 20s. My thinking with this feature was you could set it to not let the drive spin up until the player temperature reaches say 40 degrees or so. Riding around with Hijack watching the internal temp sensor, that doesnt take but a few minutes with the heat on.

Hehe.. My player sees that supid message every day. The funny thing is that it will work early in the morning when the temperature displays -20 in HiJack, yet later on in the day when it reads +2 or so, it won't work.

The same thing will happen almost every day.

Also, the player has left me with a flat battery twice, this is when the 'clikity click, clikity click' is happening and I shut down the car, the player keeps running the damn hard drive.

RRRR, that one really gets to me.