Hello.

Maybe I missed it as a newbie, but is there a way to configure my old HDDs to sleep/suspend/turn off after idling after a few hours? I could not find this settings in my Debian stable's KDE v4.8.4.

Thank you in advance.

Code: Select all

sudo hdparm -S <timeout> /dev/sd<a-z>

Please notice:
---------------------
a) not all disks support spinning down
b) spinning up can take some time (up to 30 seconds) - your desktop might seem frozen during this
c) it is an UPCASE "-S"
d) the <timeout> meaning is "somewhat peculiar", please consult the hdparm manpage on it (various ranges have different meanings)
e) sd<a-z> is likely "sda" (the disk device you want to impact)
f) hdparm is a CLI tool that requires root permissions for a reason. It's not good for "experiments". Please consult the manpage on every call you want to perform and use it with greatest care. You can severely break your hardware by "playing around".

luebking wrote:

Code: Select all

sudo hdparm -S <timeout> /dev/sd<a-z>

Please notice:
---------------------
a) not all disks support spinning down
b) spinning up can take some time (up to 30 seconds) - your desktop might seem frozen during this
c) it is an UPCASE "-S"
d) the <timeout> meaning is "somewhat peculiar", please consult the hdparm manpage on it (various ranges have different meanings)
e) sd<a-z> is likely "sda" (the disk device you want to impact)
f) hdparm is a CLI tool that requires root permissions for a reason. It's not good for "experiments". Please consult the manpage on every call you want to perform and use it with greatest care. You can severely break your hardware by "playing around".

Thanks. Hmm, 30 seconds? That's long. So, there's no GUI method to configure this?

None that i'm aware off - nor does it make much sense.
You usually want to set those parameters automatically at system startup (resp. some even after resuming from suspend to ram) and you're rather expected to understand what you're doing.

It's nothing end users should ever have to do in the first place (and HDD powermanagement for non-removable disks is also usually done in BIOS/UEFI)

luebking wrote:None that i'm aware off - nor does it make much sense.
You usually want to set those parameters automatically at system startup (resp. some even after resuming from suspend to ram) and you're rather expected to understand what you're doing.

It's nothing end users should ever have to do in the first place (and HDD powermanagement for non-removable disks is also usually done in BIOS/UEFI)

Thanks.