User's Manual

media as being like an automotive tire – driving conditions vary day-to-day, but under average normal usage the

roduct will last 5 years. If you drive aggressively every day, you will accelerate the wear and significantly shorten

the service life.

With today’s advances in power management and mobile-optimized software applications, Itronix customers have

excellent service life and reliability experience with notebook-class HDDs. Only on rare occasions do customers

face unexpected repairs due to software causing excessive HDD wear. But with complex applications on the rise, as

well as the deployment of components such as GPS and AVL, an understanding of proper HDD management is

critical.

Constant or Excessive Spinning

Windows power management settings allow your HDD to “spin down” after inactivity. This conserves battery

ower, and allows the disk heads to park for greater protection against drop and vibration events. This power

management capability is also important in preserving the service life of the HDD.

Some Itronix customers have deployed software loads that make the power management settings ineffective –

causing the HDD to spin constantly, wearing out the drive faster than the expected 5-year service life.

“Constant spinning” will degrade the service life of the HDD and cause premature drive failure.

Examples of software that can cause “constant spinning” are:

Windows power management settings configured to

never

turn off the hard disk – or

never

allow the computer

to enter standby/hibernate modes.

Routing or mapping applications that constantly log GPS coordinates to the HDD

SQL database service drivers that periodically write to the HDD

Anti-virus programs that constantly scan files in the background

Programs with bugs or unintended side effects causing excessive disk access (some versions of Microsoft’s

Excel Viewer utility are known to have this issue)

Legacy applications that may not be designed for a power-managed operating system (example: MS-DOS

programs)

Users who play media files, music, video for extended periods

In many cases, the constant spinning can be resolved by simple configuration changes in your power management

settings or application timer settings. In other cases, disk access patterns may be hard coded into an application –

and a design modification needs to be considered.

Exam

le: You have desi

ned a GPS

ram that

eriodicall

s the location of the mobile com

uter to

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-1

8/20/2007file://C:\Documents and Settin

s\harwoodm\Local Settin

s\Tem

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