Spin down External USB HDD

  • Hi there,

    I'm new to the forum, so forgive me my lack of form.

    Here is my Problem:

    Whenever I shut down my LibreElec/Kodi (NUC) the external HDDs made a scratchy noise. One HDD died (it was old and maybe it died due to another reason)

    On other systems I use the sg_start-command to power-off/park the external HDD, but this is not available in LibreElec.

    I found no other simpler solution or plugin to spin-down the hdds, so I made a shutdown-script.

    Maybe it helps somebody or you can tell me if there's already a setting or addon for this.


    SourceCode of /storage/.config/shutdown.sh


    Thanks for your time,

    Josef

  • All drives manufactured in the last ~30 years have head auto-parking technology to avoid mechanical damage. That scratchy/clunk noise is the drive doing whatever it needs to do to safely stop when power is cut. Scripting shutdown might generate less noise but makes no real-world difference to the drive. If a drive died; it was just it's time (they don't last forever).