Arch Linux

cavallino

Member

From: Campbell, CA

Registered: 2010-12-31

Posts: 14

Harddrive power up/down

Hello this is my first post here I am new to Arch but everything has been going extremely well. However I am now confronted with the first question I have been unable to answer with google and arch forum/wiki searches.

I have a PC with 3 sata hard drives 1 2tb backup 1 1.5tb with windows and 1 500gb with Arch linux. 99% of the time I don't need to access the windows or backup drive while using Arch.

In an effort to reduce noise, wear and power usage I would like to spin them down. It is my understanding that there is no way to prevent them from powering up on boot so I have been making due with sdparm --command=stop /dev/sdx in my rc.local. This works perfectly but when I go to shutdown the drive powers on and spins up before turning off which increases shutdown time and seems a bit unnecessary. Is there any way to prevent this? Both are unmounted before shutdown obviously. Thanks in advance for help and suggestions.

Last edited by cavallino (2010-12-31 01:12:25)

lagagnon

Member

From: an Island in the Pacific...

Registered: 2009-12-10

Posts: 1,087

Website

Re: Harddrive power up/down

I wonder if you are automounting those filesystems in /etc/fstab and then when /etc/rc.shutdown runs it is umounting them causing them to spin up? How about removing them from /etc/fstab and only mounting them when you need them?

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Philosophy is looking for a black cat in a dark room. Metaphysics is looking for a black cat in a dark room that isn't there. Religion is looking for a black cat in a dark room that isn't there and shouting "I found it!". Science is looking for a black cat in a dark room with a flashlight.

cavallino

Member

From: Campbell, CA

Registered: 2010-12-31

Posts: 14

Re: Harddrive power up/down

I have it set to not auto mount with the noauto option in Fstab, and they are definitely not mounted when I shutdown.  If I remove them from fstab then I'll have to edit the file every time I want to mount it and also it won't be able to turn off the drives after boot. Or maybe I'm missing something?

Edit: forgot to mention they are both NTFS using NTFS-3g if that makes a difference.

Last edited by cavallino (2010-12-31 18:11:07)

R00KIE

Forum Fellow

From: Between a computer and a chair

Registered: 2008-09-14

Posts: 4,734

Re: Harddrive power up/down

If you don't have the drives listed in fstab then they will not be touched on mount but you will still be able to command the drives to standby, you are telling the device to go into standby, the device will still be there even if no partitions are mounted. However not listing the partitions on fstab _may_ make it a little harder to mount them when needed.

As a test you can comment the entries you have in fstab for the drives you don't regularly use and see what happens when you reboot/shutdown.

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R00KIE
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cavallino

Member

From: Campbell, CA

Registered: 2010-12-31

Posts: 14

Re: Harddrive power up/down

Ok I removed the entry from fstab entirely to test it. However the drives are still spooling up before powering off.  Strange!

Oh well, maybe it's not that big of a deal or maybe I should just leave them running.