Re: [PATCH] laptop-mode for 2.6, version 4 + smart_spindown

[Bart Samwel <bart@samwel.tk>]

John Bradford wrote:
> No, but I've definitely seen other drives, (old Toshiba ~100 MB ones),
> which respect 'spin down immediately' commands, and don't support the
> spin down inactivity timer.  I can't remember whether they report
> Power Management feature set supported or not, though.

Hmmm, I think I've found the problem, hidden in the drive info. hdparm 
-I also says:

Capabilities:
[...]
         Standby timer values: spec'd by Standard, with device specific 
minimum

I think it's the device specific minimum that got me, -S 4 equals 20 
seconds, which is probably a lower value than the drive is capable of 
supporting. A bit nasty that the drive accepts the -S 4 setting, but 
just doesn't do anything with it. An error would have been nice. Anyway, 
the smart_spindown script does work for lower values, so I guess I'll 
use that instead. It has some added benefits as well, so I'm not too 
disappointed.

Bart