View source for Change idle spindown time on the HD

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hdparm [ flags ] [device] are used to set the time the harddisk must be idle, before it spins down.

This sets the idle time to one hour:

  hdparm -S242 /dev/sda 

Values of -S:
0          Disable spin down
1 - 240    Value times 5 secs (1=5 240=20 min)
241 - 251  Value-240 times 30 min. (241=30min. 251=5,5 hours)
above are special and reserved. Se man pages.


To se if the drive are active or in standby:

 hdparm -C /dev/sda



To list disks and there partitions:

 fdisk -l


NB 1: Dont set the idle time to low. Spin-up wares the disk out. 

NB 2: Don't play around with hdparm. It writes directly in the HD controler registers. You can destroy the disk.