How to automatically suspend HDD

[Dave123]

Hi,
I have laptop with two hard drives. First is SSD (with system) and the second is HDD with my private files. So I would like to setup to automatically power off of disk after 4 minutes. I set hdparm -S 48. It didn't work. So I set hdparm -B. If I set value 64 and lower the hard drive will be power off in few second. If I set value 65 and higher, the hard drive will never shut down...

Please, does anyone know, how to do it? Thanks

 

[wizardfromoz]

G'day @Dave123 and welcome to linux.org

1st up tell us what Distro and version you are using.

Then, did you specify the drive in your command, eg

hdparm -S 48 /dev/sda ?

Cheers

Chris Turner
wizardfromoz

 

[Dave123]

Hello,
I have ubuntu 20.04. I Have WDC WD10SPZX-60Z.
This commane doesn't work, until I set up value of hdparm - B 64 and lower. But if I set this, the hard drive will power of in few seconds... So I will set 65 and in this situation, the drive will sleep never...

 

[DexTheDog]

Would the script be using X(-B 64) as the time of no activity needed to suspend the hard drive and (this is the more guess part) something like the kernel checking to see if the drive is mounted and the script registering it as an activity?

 

[Dave123]

I'm so sorry, but I don't understand what do you think...

 

[DexTheDog]

I don't understand either that was mainly just a guess.

Here would be a good tutorial with some times to try. I think I could be right in a way but I think you might want to try one of the numbers they show (also its -S)
https://www.tutorialspoint.com/unix_commands/hdparm.htm

 

[dos2unix]

I have noticed hdparm doesn't work with nvme m.2 drives.
I suppose there are some technical reasons for this, but just the same...

 

[digitaltrails]

Hi,
I have laptop with two hard drives. First is SSD (with system) and the second is HDD with my private files. So I would like to setup to automatically power off of disk after 4 minutes. I set hdparm -S 48. It didn't work. So I set hdparm -B. If I set value 64 and lower the hard drive will be power off in few second. If I set value 65 and higher, the hard drive will never shut down...

Please, does anyone know, how to do it? Thanks

To clarify... are you combining -B and -S? That's what I think you should be doing. Here is an example idle-script from my own system:

#!/bin/bash
# This is run by a post-boot systemd timer job
set -x
# -S 1 to 240 specify multiples of 5 seconds \
# -S 241 to 251 specify multiples of 30 minutes
/sbin/hdparm -B 127 -S  60 -y /dev/sdc
# Latest Seagate ST4000DM004 has inbuilt power management so only use -S -y
/sbin/hdparm -S 241 -y /dev/sdd

You probably don't want -y.

The above is based on what I've read at: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Hdparm#Power_management_configuration

(But I'm actually running OpenSUSE Tumbleweed, I just like the arch documentation).