Hi! Mass storage devices are used to read their data. I don't think you will save a lot of power when reading in bigger chunks. Power is needed to spin the platters, and they should be kept spinning. For optical sotrage devices it would be a good idea to have the disc spinning slowly, but not to stop it while linearily playing video. Power is needed to move the head, but when linearily playing interleaved video files, there shouldn't be the need for frequently moving the head. Power is needed for the drive electronics, but I don't think it makes much difference if you're reading the same number of bytes in big or small chunks. Anyway, when playing streamable video formats you can make someone else do the caching, like dd if=my_video.mpeg ibs=10M obs=10k | mplayer - -cache 10000 I've tried this on a DVB-rip via network, and it plays nice and smooth while reading a chunk twice a minute. Greets, Kiste
