The HDs need to spin at power on in order to load the player software. AFter that, they spin down and stay down until music is requested from a playlist.

I have a CF->IDE adapter here that I plan to install as "drive0" in one of my players, with the real HD as "drive1". All of the player files will be on the CF card, all of the music and playlists on the HD.

EDIT: I will locate the database files on the CF card as well, and possibly the tag and playlist files, if need be. Hopefully I can get away with a 16MB card, but I also have a spare 160MB CF if necessary.

This should allow booting without having to spin up the HD (may require that I tweak the drive and/or kernel, but I think I can handle that part).

Cheers