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intheflesh
Nov 4, 2008
This may be more of a settings issue with windows, but its getting to the point that it is severely pissing me off. Have a 500GB internal HDD, everything is perfectly fine with that. I also have a 2TB external seagate drive which is connected via USB (2.0 if it matters) which houses all of my movies/music/pictures/all the stuff which isnt an OS or games. I've noticed that many programs want to access the drive for no particular reason, and will wait/hang until the drive spins up and connects.
Example: play some game for a while, over 30 minutes or whatever the timeout length is for the USB drive to spin down due to lack of use. I exit game, start up firefox (chrome does it too if it matters), and about 50% of the time, it will hang for approx 20 seconds. During this time, I can feel the external drive spin up, as my desk's built in footrest thing is very near where my drive lives. After the drive wakes up, everything progresses normally. I've checked all the folders on the external, and as far as I can tell, no programs or program-related files live on the external, so there should be no reason for firefox to want the drive to be on. i know for a fact firefox isn't actively accessing anything on the drive, because often after reading the forums or whatever for a bit, then navigating to another page, usually youtube does it, the whole wait for the external to spin up thing happens.
WHAT IS GOING ON
I have messed with the power-saver settings a bit, specifically the one for turning the monitor and HDD off after a certain amount of inactivity, and set both of those to "never turn it off" settings, but that seems to have had no effect on the external. Can't seem to find any settings specifically for the external

Windows 7 x64
Seagate 2TB external (Seagate replica GoFlex or something)
The rest of this list probably doesn't matter
WD 250GB internal X2 sata III(raid0)
Supermicro C7P67
a bunch of Kingston Ram
i5 2500K at stock speed
some lovely video card (550 ti? I dont know/care)

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intheflesh
Nov 4, 2008
How does one go about adjusting the spin down time of an external drive? Is this even possible?
I have an external drive, on which lives music, which I listen to nearly 100% of the time the computer is on. Problem is, I use Spotify, and not all the music that is played lives on my computer. Many times, if a song in the playlist lives on the internet and not locally, that is enough time for the external to decide it is bedtime. This would just be an annoyance waiting for the drive to spin back up, and I can endure a large break between songs, but the main issue is that while the external is re-discovering itself and spinning up, EVERYTHING locks up. Very aggravating if I'm gaming, kinda annoying anytime else.

intheflesh
Nov 4, 2008

movax posted:

... I haven't gotten Windows HDD-spin down working reliably with externals, but you could check to see if that timer is set to something "low" (like 10 minutes)...

Thanks, I'll try using that, maybe give a call to Seagate support to see if they have any insight. This particular external is just a fancy USB/power base thing that a normal seeming internal drive in extra plastic cladding plugs in to. The base and drive seperate easily, and the drive looks the same as any SATA internal, except for the plastic surround. Would it perhaps fix my issues if I ditched the USB dock and ran it internally? In all reality, the drive is attached to my main computer 99% of the time, I really don't use the 'portability' of an external.I've plugged other old internal SATA HDDs onto this base to pull files, and those all worked fine, so I only assume that the drive will work when plugged in internally.


COMPLETELY UNRELATED
Picked up a cheap crappy old Asus netbook (eee pc 1000HA) to use for skype/internet while I'm at work. Problem is, the webcam is upside-down somehow. Apparently this is an issue with this model, something about the cameras being constructed incorrectly. I've tried taking the thing apart to physically flip the camera in the housing, but it is such a shape that flipping it would require making new mounting holes and elongating some wires on a very very small connector, which my low amount of soldering skill does not agree with. I've used Manycam, and it works perfectly, but this thing is too old to run both Manycam and Skype at the same time. 1.6Ghz atom or something, 1GB ram. According to taskmanager, Manycam eats up about 80% of processor power to flip the webcam's image 30 times a second, leaving not enough power left to run Skype. Is there another program or something I could use that would flip the video in real-time without using all of my processing power?
And yes, I've tried many drivers. This netbook apparently shipped with like 10 different webcams, I've tried all the drivers, and every one that worked had the same upside-down image.

TL;DR
Thanks for the external HDD advice, I'll try stuff.
Is there a very lightweight program that will flip a webcam's video in real-time?

intheflesh
Nov 4, 2008
So my computer decided to start doing an annoying thing. The CPU fan will be chillen at 800 RPM, what I assume is the low speed, and will then for no apparent reason go up to super ultra full speed 2000 RPM oh my god the computer is melting for about 5 seconds, then back down to normal speed, then repeat the cycle in about 20 seconds. It does this on every fan speed setting I could find in bios. I could seem to only adjust the 'base' speed, setting it to 800 or 1200, but the fan still goes up to 2000 for no reason. All temps normal, no overclocking, pretty much dust-free case. i5-2500, supermicro motherboard, antec case and power, coolermaster (whatever the model number was, it is enormous, Hyper 212 I think?) CPU heatsink and fan.
Started doing this a few days ago, I have changed nothing on this machine in months, and not so much as moved it in the past few weeks. Using hwinfo64 to gather this info, I've seen that cpu temps never exceed ~24C at idle, and ~42C at load. I can't seem to find any setting in bios that will allow me to manually adjust fan speeds or set limits, only options for 'fan management' to be eco, normal, or optimal, all of which adjust only the base speed, CPU fan still goes into turbine mode all the time. I wouldn't care about the fan not choosing a speed to be at, except that at full tilt the CPU fan is much louder than the rest of the system. The volume fluctuation is getting to me. Its like I've got an ocean shores pink noise generator except even more annoying.
So what broke and how do I fix it?

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