Spinning down USB hard drive

[holmes]

Hi,

I have installed Ubuntu 10.10 on a USB hard drive and run Squeezplay and Squeezebox server.
I would like the drive to spin down when it is idle. I tried the Ubuntu power-management settings and HD-idle without success.
Does anyone have any experience or idea on this topic?

Many thanks,

[Jarv_77]

Holmes,

A bit late but your post came up on a search I was doing......

I have an externally powered Western Digital hard-drive connected to my joggler. It spins down automatically when not in use.

David

[Mevi]

I think it's down to the hdd whether it spins down when idle. I have a samsung portable drive that does and a generic enclosure that does, another 2 generic ones that don't. I added an app to my XP build to enable spin down on some drives, but without firmware support, no fix that I could find.

[Jarv_77]

I've been looking into this and have found that, for some, the hard drive spinning down is a big problem as it can get 'lost' from /mnt and not wake up again! At the moment I am suspecting that it is the root of my problems with mp3 files not loading in squeezeserver/player.

David

[BuZz]

drives can be set to spin down when idle via some power management settings. some usb controllers may do this automatically. if it doesn't you first need to see whether the controller support SAT (SCSI-ATA Command Translation) as without this you will not be able to send commands via hdparm for example.

first you could try something like

sudo hdparm -y /dev/sdX

and see if that works.

(should put the drive in standby)