[geeks] SATA Drives and Delay Start

[Sridhar Ayengar]

Jonathan C. Patschke wrote:
> On Wed, 5 Mar 2008, Lionel Peterson wrote:
> 
>>>> IIRC, quality RAID controllers (3Ware, for instance) can perform this
>>>> feat.  Ask a salescritter to be sure.  If you wanted a cheap and easy
>>>> way, like setting a jumper?  Sorry.
>>>
>>> Ok.  I checked, and my controller, the Highpoint RocketRAID 2320,
>>> supports staggered spin, but I don't understand how it stops the drives
>>> from spinning up if it hasn't yet booted its own firmware.
>>
>> Couldn't this be a signal that is sent down the wire (i.e. a pin held
>> high until the cards firmware takes over?), and the drives are
>> designed to await that lowered line signal (which would not otherwise
>> exist)? OR, what happens when a drive is powered up without any
>> connection? Does it start up by default, or does it await a signal
>> from the controller?
> 
> Wouldn't a more reasonable design be to wire all the SATA power
> connectors so as to enable delayed spin-up and have the drives' firmware
> written to spin the drive up in response to some sort of probe command?

That would just make too much sense.

Peace...  Sridhar