Setting SATA HDD spindown time

Question

I am able to spindown my SATA HDDs by using

sudo hdparm -y /dev/sdc

The state shown by

sudo hdparm -C /dev/sdc

changes from active/idle to standby (and I can hear the HDD spin down).

However, using

sudo hdparm -S5 /dev/sdc

doesn't spin down the drive after 5*5 = 25secs.

Some additional information:

You may need to set Advanced Power Management to something lower then 128 first, as high values (128-254) do not allow spin-down. Try sudo hdparm -B 127 /dev/sdc.
hdparm -B doesn't work, because APM_level = not supported on the HDDs.

squarebracket · Answer 1 · 2012-10-06 07:06:23Z

After more research, it seems that the -B and -S options of hdparm just doesn't work with certain Western Digital (and maybe other) drives.

This includes my WD10EADS, WD10EACS and WD20EARX.

I found a solution: hd-idle

A helpful guide to installing and configuring hd-idle on ubuntu can be found here (it's in german, but the commands are pretty self-explanatory)

1 Answer