A reader sent along this suggestion for SETI@home users who don’t like their hard drives spinning all night as SETI@home writes to its data files. We only tested it briefly, but it looks as though it should work wonderfully. Not only will this quiet and rest a desktop system’s monitor and hard drive, but it’s also a great power-saving solution for PowerBooks.
I’ve been using this solution to have everything sleep (except for the CPU) but keep the SETI client working. In your Preferences folder is a folder called “SETI@Home Data.” Updates to the work units are constantly being written here by the client and forces your HD to work all the time, which will ultimately wear your equipment faster. Create a RAM Disk and copy the SETI folder to it. Then create an alias for the folder in the Preferences folder using the same name. Under the Energy Saver control panel, allow the monitor to shut down and hard drive to spin down in the least amount of time, but don’t let the system “sleep”. On my 7600/G3 the SETI client screensaver will run, one minute later the screen goes blank, in 15 minutes my monitor shuts off, and 30 minutes later (the minimum) the hard drives spin down.
