Hard Disk "spins down" while using dolphin, causing lag

[Master_T]

Hi all, first post here, hope I don't mess it up

I've used dolphin in the past and I have it all configured and set up properly, and it works as expected, no "emulation" problems to speak of.

BUT, I have a related issue that is annoying. Basically it is this: I have my ISOs on a secondary hard disk drive (not the system one where my OS is, since that is a fast but small SSD disk). The problem is that when running games from it, dolphin doesn't "keep the drive spinning" constantly, instead it accesses it only when the game needs new data. This results in frequent instances during gameplay where the disk idles and windows stops it from spinning altogether. Then when dolphin needs new data the disk needs to "spin up" again, causing noticeable stutter (1-3 seconds where dolphin freezes completely, until it has read the new data).

Now I know I can just fully disable disk idling from windows, but that would be a bit excessive, since I don't want my disk always spinning even when no application is using it. So my question is: is there a way to prevent the disk from idling only while dolphin is running a game from it??

Hope my question wasn't too confusing... thanks in advance for any tips!

[Fiora]

This kind of thing might be a little trickier than expected since merely reading from the ISO isn't enough to stop it from going idle; if the read gets cached and doesn't actually hit the disk, it doesn't count as a read, as far as I know.

I run into this a whole lot with my music library, since I keep it on my secondary drive and if I skip to a song that's not in the disk cache, it lags for about 5 seconds before starting.

[mbc07]

A very simple .bat script may do the trick. Try this (paste in notepad and save as .bat):

Code:

@echo off
:start
echo tmp > tmp
del tmp
ping 127.0.0.1 -n 60 > nul
goto start

Put this .bat inside the hard disk that spins down and run it, then minimize the command prompt and run Dolphin. This script creates a file, delete it, wait for 5 seconds and do everything again, preventing the hard drive from spinning down...

[doohan]

Hi Master_T

Try to run a game on another HDD and see if it happens too.

See my post. Think it's same problem :-)

https://forums.dolphin-emu.org/Thread-lag-in-games-solved

[Master_T]

@Jhonn: Yeah, I'm using something similar at the moment, that I've written in C#. I was just wondering if there was a way in dolphin to do it automatically.

@doohan: I know it is the HDD, I can hear it spinning up when the stutter occours I only have that one tho, and an SSD which is too small to store wii games on.

I think I'll write a loader that opens dolphin and runs a background loop that does dummy writes as long as dolphin is opened. Might share it later if anyone's interested.

[KHg8m3r]

What happens if you put dolphin and its files on the HDD and play from there?

[haddockd]

I always buy Western Digital Black. They are designed to be "always ready". They cost a little more but I have never had an issue with Dolphin and having my games on a secondary HDD

[kirbypuff]

Just let it spin.
Disable the power saving features (set Turn off hard disks to "Never" in the Power Options).

Your HDD will last longer (spin up/down cycles are the main reason for HDD failure).

Modern hard drives run cool & quiet and are power-efficient even when they're spinning.

[mimimi]

Or just set it to something reasonable, like 1 hour or more.

[Master_T]

(01-31-2015, 07:30 AM)kirbypuff Wrote: Just let it spin.
Disable the power saving features (set Turn off hard disks to "Never" in the Power Options).

Your HDD will last longer (spin up/down cycles are the main reason for HDD failure).

Modern hard drives run cool & quiet and are power-efficient even when they're spinning.

That option is already disabled. It's the drive itself that "decides" to spin down very often, I think less than a minute after no requests. I've read that it's a feature of some drives in order to save power (it's a laptop-sized drive, so it makes sense).

For now I'm just using a anti-idling script that writes a few bytes to disk every 30 seconds, seems to work ok.