[plug] Powering down hard disks

[Andrew Furey]

Hi folks,

I have a gateway machine with a somewhat noisy hard
disk, and given that it's in an otherwise quiet
environment, I'd like to power the hard disk down to
reduce the noise.

I've tried using hdparm to set the spindown time to 5
minutes or so, but it still accesses the disk every
5-10 seconds. As suggested in the Battery-powered
mini-HOWTO, I've also tried setting flush and sync
times to 1 hour (would prefer 3-4 hours), but with no
apparent effect.

Anyone done this before? I'm 95% sure this disk can be
powered down since I've done it before (in another
box). The machine is basically idle otherwise (as far
as reading from the disk goes).

TIA
Andrew

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