| 摘要 |
<p>A method and apparatus for controlling a hard disk drive in a computer system is disclosed. The method and apparatus reduce the hard disk's power consumption, enhance the performance of the computer system incorporating the hard disk, and maintain data consistency. The computer system has a cache and controls the power consumption of the local hard disk drive. A cache flush writes data from the cache to the disk. Disk accesses are detected. If no disk accesses were detected, the cache is flushed after a first predetermined period of time (T2) has elapsed since the last flush. If a disk has been accessed, the cache is flushed after a second predetermined period of time (T3 or T4) has elapsed since the last disk access. Even if the predetermined period of time (T3 or T4) since the last disk access has not elapsed, if disk access were detected, the cache is flushed after a predetermined number of disk accesses.</p> |
