2006/1/24, Shawn Usry [off-list ref]:

Hmm..that brings up an interesting question -

Could/would/should a lack of sufficient power to the system, cause disk errors to show up, especially under high I/O?

Anyone with experience in this?

Of course boy, and I've seen some.
Working on a proto based on a Via Epia 10k (Nehemiah), with a
home-brew power supply and a couple of pelletier modules, I had
problems with 2 IDE drives that were difficult to identify :
- spining was quite a long process, but went always ok (drives had
trouble to get to full speed, took 10secs for them to warm up).
- at heavy load, random crash (and you know how ide crashes). After a
long study, it came that the PSU voltage drop down for 12V (at 10.8V,
box crashes, net log says).

So my (real) question would be :
- how much a drive consumes ? how long can it be on diet ?
and, on top of this :

Is it possible to make the drives turn slower ? To make the heads move slower ?
That would be my dream. No more heat, a 10mA consumption, no more noise...