[Tfug] battery life, power management and windows vs linux

[t takahashi]

On 3/22/07, Stephen Hooper <stephen.hooper at gmail.com> wrote:
> The only way I could suggest that writing atimes would slow down your
> power consumption level to any radical extent would be if you weren't
> writing to disk at all... in which case writing atimes seems to be a
> little bit of a no brainer.

one that the op did not mention having tried, stephen.

it is possible that the op is reading files, including binaries, that
are cached, and the disk is spinning up just to write atime.  maybe
even every single time the op runs /bin/echo, for example.  different
file systems optimize in different ways, and it is possible that
windows handles atimes differently from the op's linux fs, possibly
affecting this type of thing.  there was a thread on the lkml not too
long ago about this very topic, in fact.

even if the above is not the case, providing the hint to try enabling
noatime on his fs could be worth the price of admission, regardless of
how, or whether, his particular version of windows handles atime.  the
latter isn't the point.  (please try not to be too literal about
suggestions like this and assume they merely seek yes/no, any more
than "what's cooking?" or "ever heard of politeness?" or "do you have
the time?" need to be taken completely literally all of the time.)
the former is the point.

did your post have a disparaging tone to it, stephen?  or did i
misread it?  i'm hoping i just misread it.

iac, hope you solve your problem, op.  over and out.

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