[Ti] Journaling

[John]

>> Will this increase my battery life? I want to increase the HD life, 
>> and prefer it sleeps when I am away for it for a large chunk of time.
>
> Try turning it off and see if the disk will halt after some time.
>
> Journalling is good when the computer crashes, because you do not 
> (usually) get any disk errors that needs reparing after a crash 
> ("checkdisk" type of simple scanning/repairs). A system can be 
> restarted much faster after a failure because disks have not to be 
> scanne, just check if the journal is synced. This may be very 
> important for a large server with lot of user depending on it and GB 
> to TB disks.
>
> For OSX on a single-user portable, it does not seems that critical, at 
> least from the previous mentioned reasons.
> Maybe there are other aspects that I am not aware of.

Followup:

I turned journaling off, and sure enough, my HD spun down after a 
certain amount of time. I've had a few crashes since, and while it took 
longer for the machine to start up (subjective observation), I haven't 
noticed any ill effects. Peace of mind (HD) is better than crash 
recovery (I've never had a major crash I couldn't get out of).

Thanks!

John Pariseau