Curious about Hard drive spin and cache

[Chakdephate]

Hi

Hopefully this is the right place to put this question.

I am new to Rockbox and before I butg you for answers I must say that this is a DARNED GOOD PROJECT!!..

Anyways I was just curious about something.

When I start playing music on Rockbox on a 60gb ipod, for the first 6 mins (a bit less then 6 actually) the hard drive keeps on spinning and the ipod vibrates hard. My first guess is that during this period Rockbox is moving songs lined up in my playlist to the cache which is why it spins so much.

So my question was why does this not happen with the apple OS? It doesnt spin and bounce around as much as Rockbox - is it just because Rockbox is in early stages?

And my next question was, if I use Rockbox designed for the 60gb then this is better for using fixed playlists BUT if i like to skip around then I should use the Rockbox made for 30gb ipod. Is this simply because it will cache less songs at the first go SO it spins the HDD less?

And this much spin doesnt damage the Ipod does it?

Thanks!

[Llorean]

It shouldn't be spinning for 6 whole minutes. The cache shouldn't take that long to fill. Is this an actual timing, or are you just trying to say 'It takes a while'?

It's hard to answer why something doesn't happen in the Apple OS, because we didn't write it, but it does sound somewhat like your iPod is doing something abnormal.

Also, there is no official 60gb build. So, I have to ask: Are these things happening with an official build? Because any and ALL questions about unofficial builds should be in the thread where that build came from, and nowhere else.

[Chakdephate]

Well I said 6 mins because i noticed it was still spinning near the end of the second song.. so its approximately 6 mins in total.
Ill time it properly next time (I just ran out of battery)

Its Senabs build.
Hmm ok.. So first thing I should do is use the official build and see if it does the same thing - could be my ipod is buggered?

Sorry, I think I posted this in the wrong place ha. Wont happen again


Anyways its my second day with Rockbox and its ROCKING!
..you guys are doing great work!

I bought an Ipod just because of Rockbox haha..  wonder if people predicted Rockbox would boost Ipod sales

[travishayes89]

wonder if people predicted Rockbox would boost Ipod sales

LOL

[ryran]

And my next question was, if I use Rockbox designed for the 60gb then this is better for using fixed playlists BUT if i like to skip around then I should use the Rockbox made for 30gb ipod. Is this simply because it will cache less songs at the first go SO it spins the HDD less?

You pretty much got it right. The point is that as soon as you start playing/modify* a playlist, Rockbox starts buffering tracks to ram until it's full. It doesn't wait for a minute to see if you're sure you picked the right album, etc etc. So if you constantly skip around--and aren't using queue/insert to add single songs to the end of your playlist--or if you're always inserting songs next while you've still got a long playlist, you'd probably be better off not letting Rockbox take advantage of the extra ram.

* welll if you modify a playlist it won't necessarily start buffering immediately--depending on what you did, it might not start till the end of the song. you know what I meant though.