I'm currently configuring a new home server, and I am trying to get the disks to spin down after one hour. But they do not spin down.

Setup

I have my entire system on an ssd: /dev/sda. I have three hdds in the system: /dev/sdb, /dev/sdc and /dev/sdd. They are not mounted, although they do contain (active) LVM volumes.

What does work

I can put the disk into standby using :

hdparm -y /dev/sdb

The disk stays spun down for days (if I leave the system alone), indicating (I think) that the system really isn't generating any activity

Using relatively small values for the timeout like :

hdparm -S 180 /dev/sdb
hdparm -S 240 /dev/sdc
hdparm -S 241 /dev/sdd

also works. Each of the disks spins down after the specified amount of time (15 minutes, 20 minutes and 30 minutes, respectively)

What doesn't work

I try to set the timeout value to one hour, like so :

hdparm -S 242 /dev/sdb

The command appears to succeed, but the disk doesn't go into standby at all (i.e. after a day, the disk is still in active/idle mode, as witnessed by my power meter, as well as

hdparm -C /dev/sdb

System details

This is Debian Squeeze, running on an Atom-powered Asus motherboard (AT5NM10T-I). The disks are:

[1.948217] scsi 0:0:0:0: Direct-Access ATA OCZ VERTEX PLUS  3.50 PQ: 0 ANSI: 5
[1.953713] scsi 1:0:0:0: Direct-Access ATA ST2000DL003-9VT1 CC3C PQ: 0 ANSI: 5
[1.954302] scsi 4:0:0:0: Direct-Access ATA ST31500341AS     SD1B PQ: 0 ANSI: 5
[1.954873] scsi 5:0:0:0: Direct-Access ATA ST31500341AS     SD1B PQ: 0 ANSI: 5

Solution 1:

In its default configuration, smartd checks disk status once every 30 minutes, except when the disk is in standby.

Apparently, that generates enough disk-activity for disks to never actually go to sleep (for timeouts larger than 30 minutes), but doesn't wake-up any sleeping disks.