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I wonder if there are a better tool than the panel at System → Preferences → Power Management to manage the power consumption for the HDD. Specifically HDD in a laptop.

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You can experiment a bit with a few options for hdparm command. Specifically:

  • -S <number> sets the idle timeout before the drive turns its spindle off.
  • -M <number> sets the Acoustic Management Mode (this parameter also helps in the power management)

I don't report here how the value should be chosen, I let you to read it from the man page.

That said, I would NOT recommend to choose timeout values too short, as still one of the most stressing times for a hard disk is the spin-up time, i.e. it's better to leave a HDD spin a little longer while idling than continuously turn it off and on, especially with modern, low-power HDDs.

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Maybe PowerTop is for you.

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not exactly what I wanted. – starcorn Feb 19 '11 at 12:36
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@starcorn it may be worth your while to specify what you want in more detail, and why you find sys-prefs-power management insufficient... – Christoph Mar 21 '11 at 15:09
And for the record, laptop hard drives are relatively decent when it comes to power consumption, as they won't suck away all your power. – Thomas Ward Apr 20 '11 at 15:43
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