EnQue Software and Consulting Services
Route 1 Box 116C
Pleasant Hill, MO 64080
Voice/Fax : 816-987-5709
24-Hour BBS: 816-353-0991

First, let's dispense with the legal mumbo-jumbo in English. Though EnQue
Software strives to provide the highest quality software products at the
lowest possible price (in this case free), we cannot accept responsibility
for any damages that may be incurred by their use. As with any drive
utility, it is strongly recommend that you back up your data before use.

This program is FREEWARE and may be copied and distributed without charge
to anyone and everyone. We would love to see thousands, even millions of
people use this program. This program must not be sold for profit. It may
be included with other products, commercial or otherwise, as long as this
text file is included, and both it and the program are not modified in any
way.
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Most IBM and compatible PC computers shipped in the last several years use
IDE hard disks. Many of these hard disks have built in power saving
features, where the drive "spins down" after a certain amount of time. This
feature is especially useful for computers that must remain on for long
periods of time, such as BBS's and computer-driven FAX and voice mail
systems. However, it is seldom used except in notebook computers. With this
program you can now take advantage of this feature effortlessly. This
program is not a TSR and consumes no memory. Simply include the following
line in your AUTOEXEC.BAT file.

SLEEP C 10

The first parameter specifies the drive and can be either C or D. If you
have two drives, simply add a line for each drive. The second parameter is
the timeout in minutes. This can be between 1 and 15. After this amount of
time, if no disk activity has occurred, you hard disk will "spin down". In
other words, the drive motor will shut off. As soon as your computer needs
to access the disk, the drive will "spin up" and proceed as normal.
Depending on your hard disk type, this may take anywhere from 2-10 seconds.
This cycle then repeats. During normal use, you may never see the drive
spin down, but during breaks, lunch, and overnight, the benefit occurs.
Don't worry about spinning the drive up and down - they are rated in the
tens of thousands of cycles. This is dozens of cycles per day for years -
more than the life of most PC's. If you would like to return the drive to
the default setting, simply enter 0 as the timeout value.

This product does not read or write to your disk at any time, and will
automatically detect an IDE drive. If your drive is SCSI or an older AT
drive, the program will simply exit with an error message. The program
will also tell you if you have an IDE drive that does not support standby
mode.

It is estimated that it costs America billions of dollars each year just
to power computers. While a hard disk consumes much less power than a
monitor, it is a major consumer of energy. By using this utility, coupled
with common sense actions such as turning off your monitor and turning the
speed of your computer down (for systems that have a turbo/normal speed
switch) while your computer is unattended can result in significant power
savings.

So what does this translate into in terms of dollars? Let's say that
there are 50 million PC computers that use IDE hard drives. Let's also
assume that about 50% of these are left running overnight (which is common
practice among many corporations). A typical spinning hard disk uses about
2-4 watts of power. That translates to about 1200 MWH consumed unecessarily
spinning hard drives every night: that works out to be over $100,000 a day
or nearly $40 million a year! In standby mode, the power consumption of
your drive is reduced to about 1/2 watt. That translates to only about $5
million a year, a savings of $35 million! Yes, it's hard to believe that if
everyone used this free utility, America alone would save tens of millions
of dollars a year!

We hope you enjoy this product. We also have several 'C' programming
productivity products available for free download on our 24-hour BBS, so
feel free to stop by and drop us a line. Or you can send us InterNet mail
at either of the following addresses:

[email protected]
[email protected]

It is a shame that it took this long to become "Green" minded. Soon, all
PC's will take advantage of this and other features. Good luck being
"GREEN"!
Sincerely,

Kevin L. Huck
Dr. Boyd G. Gafford
EnQue Software and Consulting