Spin down external HDD ?

Zach · September 25, 2018 at 4:52 PM

Hi, I've attached a Seagate Backup Plus external HDD to my Raspberry Pi running LibreELEC. Everything works just fine. This drive is a little more active than the previous one, a WD My Book. And what I was wondering now, is it possible to spin down this drive after being idle for let's say one hour or so? Is this possible, does it bring anything? Extented life? Less energy usage? Or should I just leave things as they are? Thx, Zach

**Klojum** · September 25, 2018 at 5:58 PM Official Post

There have been a couple of threads already on this topic, try the Search option (top right) of this forum.

Zach · September 25, 2018 at 7:32 PM

Hi, searched related to hdparm and then issued:

LibreELEC:~ # hdparm -S 128 /dev/mmcblk0p2

/dev/mmcblk0p2:

setting standby to 128 (10 minutes + 40 seconds)

HDIO_DRIVE_CMD(setidle) failed: Invalid argument

Afraid the last message (invalid argument) predicts this won't just work.

Any help? Thx, Zach

Zach · September 25, 2018 at 7:35 PM

LibreELEC:/dev # hdparm -S 128 /dev/sda2

/dev/sda2:

setting standby to 128 (10 minutes + 40 seconds)

LibreELEC:/dev #

Tried again with /dev/sda2...seems to work now. Let me check...

Thx! Maybe i'll recall this message in 10 minutes + 27 seconds

Zach · September 25, 2018 at 8:10 PM

It works, great. Now I need to find a way to make this permanent, also after rebooting? Grtz, Zac

**Klojum** · September 25, 2018 at 9:46 PM Official Post

You can use the autostart.sh script in the .config folder.

Create it if it's not already there.

Zach · September 26, 2018 at 12:10 PM

Done! Thx for the advice.