Older Dell laptops' hard drives using "power saving mode"? \ VOGONS

Older Dell laptops' hard drives using "power saving mode"?

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First post, by Xanarki

Posted on 2020-05-10, 09:14

Xanarki Offline

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I've been working on an old circa 2003 Dell Latitude (Win98 se). Whenever I play a game on it, most of them, will have a second stutter every so often when a new action is performed. Despite having a 1.5ghz cpu and a 32MB ATI card, even older games (pre-2001) have this issue.

After doing some research, it seems the problem is with Dell's hard drives. Apparently, their hard drives by default runs under a "power saving mode" of sorts. Every time a pagefile is accessed, the hard drive "wakes up" and spins.

I saw a suggestion to use a tool called Notebook Hardware Control to disable this, but it doesn't mention supporting Win98, plus, I can find very little info online about it, and don't wanna fry my hard drive because of an unknown program.

Anyone got other advice?

Edit: I also made sure my hard disks were set to "never" turn off in "Power Management Properties" btw.

Reply 1 of 10, by Horun

Posted on 2020-05-10, 15:21

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Have you checked the BIOS ? There may be some power saving features you can disable (my old Vostro has a few in BIOS that I disabled)

Hate posting a reply and then have to edit it because it made no sense 😁 First computer was an IBM 3270 workstation with CGA monitor. Stuff: https://archive.org/details/@horun

Reply 2 of 10, by Xanarki

Posted on 2020-05-10, 19:29

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Ohp sorry, I should have mentioned that I looked in the BIOs. Nothing there though sadly.

Reply 3 of 10, by darry

Posted on 2020-05-10, 19:41

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There might be a way to modify the default power management behavior of the drive using hdat2 .

Are you able to try with a non Dell drive ?

Another option is using a Compact Flash card with a passive adapter instead of the original drive . If the BIOS allows bigger drives, an SSD with an adapter could be an option too .

Last edited by Stiletto on 2020-05-12, 04:29. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 4 of 10, by Xanarki

Posted on 2020-05-10, 20:18

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I searched within the manual of hdat2 and didn't find any options for altering power saving but maybe it's worded differently?

I haven't tried another hard drive. That was gonna be my last resort, as it took awhile to get my current configuration to be stabilized. Just wanted to note, this particular laptop was shipped with XP, I got 98 on it after using compatible drivers etc.

Reply 5 of 10, by darry

Posted on 2020-05-10, 20:37

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Xanarki wrote on 2020-05-10, 20:18:

I searched within the manual of hdat2 and didn't find any options for altering power saving but maybe it's worded differently?

I haven't tried another hard drive. That was gonna be my last resort, as it took awhile to get my current configuration to be stabilized. Just wanted to note, this particular laptop was shipped with XP, I got 98 on it after using compatible drivers etc.

Power management and standby timer are probably what you are looking for .

Reply 6 of 10, by Xanarki

Posted on 2020-05-11, 05:40

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I disabled the APM (value was at 80), and it seems to work fine now. Thanks for the suggestion. Hopefully my hard drive won't crap out 10x quicker now though 🤣.

Reply 7 of 10, by Xanarki

Posted on 2020-05-12, 01:14

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@darry again thanks for the suggestion. By any chance, do you (or anyone lurking) know how to save this setting? Because after powering down, it reverts to default (enabled). I tried looking in the registry and I also tried modifying/saving the DCO (DCO area is not enabled though so it made no difference).

Reply 8 of 10, by darry

Posted on 2020-05-12, 01:29

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Xanarki wrote on 2020-05-12, 01:14:

@darry again thanks for the suggestion. By any chance, do you (or anyone lurking) know how to save this setting? Because after powering down, it reverts to default (enabled). I tried looking in the registry and I also tried modifying/saving the DCO (DCO area is not enabled though so it made no difference).

The only time I used hdat2 to disable APM, it was on a much newer drive . I used the procedure below . I have no idea if it would work on your drive .
https://silentpcreview.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=68760

Reply 9 of 10, by Xanarki

Posted on 2020-05-12, 01:40

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Yeh same site I found, and since I have no means to do the last step (save DCO), I can't save the APM setting.

Guess I'll just boot into hdat2 anytime I wanna play a game for an extended period 🤣.

Reply 10 of 10, by darry

Posted on 2020-05-13, 02:27

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There also exists an IBM/Hitachi feature tool that does work on some third party drives (if you use an older version of the tool, like the one linked, I believe) .

https://hddguru.com/software/2006.01.20-Hitac … e-Feature-Tool/

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