Hard Drive settings and lock-up's on long captures

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System set up: i850e MP, Abit SH6 MB (i815e chipset), 256M (Named) Ram, Ati Rage Pro video card, ATI TV Wonder capture card (just recieved their updated drivers in the mail on CD), IBM 45G ATA-100 7200rpm HD.

I was still getting intermittent system lock up on long captures using ATI capture software set for MPG,...until....

Hard drive tune up hint 1408 for PC's with large amounts of ram, thanks to Sandra(shareware):

mycomputer->control panel->system->performance->file system->change typical role of computer to Network Server.

I assume that this setting will speed file through put.

I also changed the default settings in power management for the hard drive to power down from the default of one hour to four hours.

I had noticed that as long as I would fuss with the mouse to keep the system awake, that long captures were more reliable. Baby sitting the PC is too much like work. After making the above changes, the system hasn't locked up since.

Has anyone else experienced lock-up's during long captures?

(I've put together and maintain a hundred systems (Win9x, Linux). My personal creed has been to do "stock" installs and it hasn't failed me except on my own box. My system with the ATI TV Wonder has been an utter source of frustration up to now. By the way, tweak at your own risk.)

-- me (snake_mountain@hotmail.com), March 20, 2001

Answers

The power-down may be the sole cause of the problem. ie., While it is capturing, it is powered-down either hard-drive or anything else may cause the PC to freeze.

-- Tony T (tonydtieu@yahoo.com), March 20, 2001.

i left a camera onm motion detection for a week and the hard drive is now unuseable

-- dude man (dude@casta.net), April 16, 2001.

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