Berkeley CSUA MOTD:Entry 37135
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2025/05/24 [General] UID:1000 Activity:popular
5/24    

2005/4/10-14 [Computer/HW/Drives] UID:37135 Activity:nil
4/10    My iPod prefetches a few songs from the HD, buffers them into memory,
        and then shuts down the HD to save power. If possible, how do I do the
        same thing on my iTunes where I pre-declare non OS swapped mem so that
        I can save power on my notebook?  -ok thx
        \_ <crickets chirping>
        \_ This might work for you on OS X:
           1. In System Preferences->Energy Saver, click 'Put HD to sleep
              when possible'
           2. Create and mount a ramdisk:
              $ hdid -nomount ram://[2 * 1024 * disk size in mb]
              /dev/disk5 [Note this may be different]
              $ diskutil eraseDisk HFS+ RAMDISK disk5 [Use the dev hdid made]
              Started erase on disk disk5
              Creating Partition Map
              5% ..Formatting Disk  100% ..
              Finished erase on disk disk5
              Finished partitioning on disk disk5
           3. Copy your MP3s into the disk called RAMDISK on your desktop
              (you can use the finder or cp mp3 /Volumes/RAMDISK)
           4. To eject the disk either drag it to the trash or
              $ hdiutil detach /dev/disk5
           \_ That's a total hack and will only work for small numbers of
              files.  I think what the OP wants is iTunes to do some disk
              caching so it spins up the disk, reads the next X-MB of music,
              and then the disk can auto-sleep for 5-10 minutes.  BTW I mean
              hack as 'horribly inelegant', not 'bad idea'.
              \_ I agree this is a total hack and OP probably can't get
                 more than 256 MB or so worth of MP3s into memory at any
                 given time (assuming that OP has something like 768MB or
                 1GB of RAM). However, 256 MB is probably enough space to
                 fit 2 hrs of mp3s (at 2 mb/min). Parking the hd for 2 hrs
                 might yeild some battery savings.
                 If OP wanted to really go nuts he could write himself a
                 little caching daemon that talked to iTunes every 30 mins
                 or 1 hrs and determined which mp3s had been heard and
                 removed them in favor of those mp3s that were likely to
                 be heard in the future (same album, remaining songs in
                 play list, &c.).
                 Personally I think all this is just crazy.  What might
                 save more power is to get a 1GB Kool-Aid Shuffle or USB
                 thumb drive and stick your mp3s on that. The battery
                 usage for USB might be less than for running the hd.
2025/05/24 [General] UID:1000 Activity:popular
5/24    

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