In recent kernel (2.4.20pre...), an option (commit) is available.
have crashes only when experimenting with the kernel, I think this is
not as bad as it might look at first glance. But, you know, no
guarantees of mine, your filesystem might become garbled, your hard
disk might become fried!
In my opinion this is not a solution. First I am still not convinced
that it is normal for ext3 to touch the disk when there is no other
activity on the system. Then spinning the disk for 5 minutes seems very
bad from the powersaving point of view and also from the life of the HD.
That said if you have done nothing else, I am not sure if your disk
enter in a powersaving state. Have you tweaked it with hdparm or are you
using noflushd?
I have just disabled noflushd, after seeing all the interesting information
in this thread and after some estimations.
My Inspiron 4100 has a battery with 59Wh. With my kind of work, I can
expect that this is enough for about 3h, so it needs about 20W. The disk
needs about 2W. So if I was able to half that, my consumption would fall to
19W, or I would gain about 10 minutes. In my case, I think this is not
worth the disadvantages for the disk, which I overlooked first.
Harry
