Re: Does Linux support powering down SATA drives?

Alistair John Strachan
2005-11-19T20:21:47Z

On Saturday 19 November 2005 20:25, Alan Cox wrote:
> On Sad, 2005-11-19 at 19:00 +0000, Alistair John Strachan wrote:
> > > SATA not yet, USB you could however.
> >
> > Or PATA, of course. I switch off two of my HDs 4 minutes after last use
> > with the commands:
> >
> > hdparm -S 48 /dev/hde
> > hdparm -S 48 /dev/hdg
> >
> > Isn't there a passthru patch in the works to let commands, such as the
> > one required for suspend, through to a SATA device?
>
> The latest kernels support command passthrough for SMART and the like
> but hdparm -S does not "switch off" anything. It may spin a drive down
> but the power consumption of 23 hours a day of "spun down" is
> significant, probably more than the hour it is powered up.

Interesting.

> Same as the problem with many household devices in standby that actually
> end up using as lot of power in their many "turned off" hours

My mistake, I was unaware of the difference between "Suspend" and (presumably)
"Sleep". I've tried the latter without success on a Maxtor 120G here, does
this work for anybody else (hdparm -Y)?

--
Cheers,
Alistair.

'No sense being pessimistic, it probably wouldn't work anyway.'
Third year Computer Science undergraduate.
1F2 55 South Clerk Street, Edinburgh, UK.