[geeks] SATA Drives and Delay Start

[Sridhar Ayengar]

Lionel Peterson wrote:
>>> RTFWP: (Read The F* WikiPedia ;-) ) 
>>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_ATA 
>>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Staggered_spinup
>> I've read both of those articles, but I'm still confused.  The SATA
>>  power connector to which the drives will be attached are coming
>> directly from the power supply.  I don't see a way of attaching a
>> SATA pwoer cord to the controller, and, in any case, I doubt the
>> controller would be capable of gating that much power.
> 
> Quote: "It requires a feature called Power Up in Standby (also called
> PM2) in both the hard drives and the computer's BIOS, as this option
> keeps the hard drives from spinning up when receiving current,
> waiting for the staggered spin-up"[0]
> 
> Which I read as meaning the drive need to support it, and the
> computer needs to act a certain way. It appears that this is a
> two-part process, the drive knows to lok for a certain condition
> before spinning up, and the BIOS exerts a control signal once it is
> up and running. Again, the model in my mind would be a line held in a
> certain state that does not occur by default (high?), and is brought
> low by by the controller in a prescribed manner if a certain option
> enabled in the firmware. In this canse the firmware overrides the
> default nature of the hardware.

My drives support it, and my controller supports it.  Does that mean it 
will Just Work(tm)?

Peace...  Sridhar