I’ve just installed NT4 on an old computer in my room to use as a server and to my horror I discovered that it supports absolutely no power management.
The problem is that the hard drive is incredibly noisy and it is in my bedroom… a rather big problem
So, is there any-any-any way to get the hdd to power down after a while?
I can’t really install a newer OS because it’s a very old computer. 200mhz, 64 MB ram. I do have a copy of 2k but I think the computer is way too slow for that. Or am I wrong? Could it run reasonably as a light-usage server?
I’ve put windows 2000 on a similar machine. It will work as a file server, an internet gateway, or a simple machine for browser and e-mails, but anything processor or memory intensive is going to make it choke.
NT4 did not support power mgmt, period. There was a KB out that warned against installing any 3rd party power management, or enabling any hardware-level power management. IIRC, the problem was that if the disk powered down, NT would crash on restart every time. As ECG said, switch to W2K.
Hang on! This is a server, working 24/7, and you want to put power management on it? I’d suggest you’d be better off looking at quietening the computer. A cheap and easy fix is to mount the HDD with rubber washers between the HDD and the frame. Then you can look into quiet fans. Another low-tech solution would be to put the server in a cupboard or the attic.
If you do put Windows 2000 on it, I strongly suggest buying extra memory. It’s not expensive, unless it’s something wierd.
My server has those hardware specs - it’s headless running some version of Debian and is my router/firewall/fileserver/webserver/other stuff all in one. I keep it downstairs and it stays out of everyone’s way. Other than gallery taking a while to load pictures, I’m fairly satisfied with it for now.
The 120G drive in it that’s earmarked for weekly backups is kept spun down most of the time with hdparm.
