Seti Hard Disk Access Frequency

[TC]

Anybody have an idea how often the client will access the hard drive for new data? I'm sure it depends on how fast the system is, but is there anything to go on? Does it load a certain size chunk into ram each time? Reason I ask is I have a shuttle SV24 and it's got very little case ventilation. I'd like to help manage heat inside the case by allowing the drive to turn off part of the time. I'm wondering if there would be any interval of time before shutdown that's more desirable. Say 10 minutes, 15, or 30 - etc.

[chawken]

Originally posted by TC
Anybody have an idea how often the client will access the hard drive for new data? I'm sure it depends on how fast the system is, but is there anything to go on? Does it load a certain size chunk into ram each time? Reason I ask is I have a shuttle SV24 and it's got very little case ventilation. I'd like to help manage heat inside the case by allowing the drive to turn off part of the time. I'm wondering if there would be any interval of time before shutdown that's more desirable. Say 10 minutes, 15, or 30 - etc.

From what I have seen, it accesses the disk at least once a minute.
So TC, whose team are you going to put your clunkers on - Basher's or the Collective?

[TC]

Well the only clunker I have at the moment is a compaq laptop with a pentium 150mmx. It takes it about 60-75 hours per unit, so I'm not sure it's worth it. I do have a ppro 200 in the closet I could throw together without a case and that would be good for about 1 a day. The only problem is all of my switches are maxed out. I need another hub or switch to connect more computers.

[Sir-Epix]

Originally posted by TC
Anybody have an idea how often the client will access the hard drive for new data? I'm sure it depends on how fast the system is, but is there anything to go on? Does it load a certain size chunk into ram each time? Reason I ask is I have a shuttle SV24 and it's got very little case ventilation. I'd like to help manage heat inside the case by allowing the drive to turn off part of the time. I'm wondering if there would be any interval of time before shutdown that's more desirable. Say 10 minutes, 15, or 30 - etc.

I run Seti off a Zip disk some times at the lab...and I have seen it write about every 3-5 minutes with that. It is probably the same with the hard drive.

[zouo]

I've heard this question come up before and if I remember correctly the only regular disk access Seti does is write to the various files e.g. state.sah as the work progresses. On a very fast machine this means that it will write quite often.

If you have a network you could try running Seti on a network share and see if that adversely affects the times/disk access.

[lonewolf1983]

u can run seti off your floppy drive,but may prematurely wear out your drive and disk
or run it on a RAMdisk (say 20 megs) and shut off the HD
:)

[killem1x1]

Originally posted by lonewolf1983
u can run seti off your floppy drive,but may prematurely wear out your drive and disk
or run it on a RAMdisk (say 20 megs) and shut off the HD
:)
Ramdrive, sounds interesting, I'll have to try that today...

[Murphy]

It's been a while, but the major downside of ramdrive is that data (half processed WU's) is lost when computer shuts down abnormally for whatever reason.