* André Wienck:

> On Wed, 1 Aug 2007 23:48:24 +0200 (CEST), "Joel CARNAT"
><joel@carnat.net> wrote:
>> It is pluggued using firewire and recognised as /dev/sd0.
>
> That being a SCSI device: try scsictl.
>

Most USB/FW umass controllers do a very poor job at converting anything except
the bare essentials of the SCSI standard. 

There is, to my knowledge, no way to access *any* of the SMART or
ATA-configuration commands. Some bridges are smart enough to be able to 
translate the scsi STOP command to something ATA-ish (which isn't the same
as an ata setidle, but it's a start..), but most of them don't.

If OP wants to have an external SCSI disk that automatically spins down
(like I do, really..), there's only three options:

1) use a harddrive that supports idle settings that are retained over a 
   power cycle. Some Hitachi drives do this, IIRC.
2) Use an enclose that does the spin-down on its own. The WD MyBook
   series do that, if memory serves me right, but those can't be had without
   a disk.
3) Use one of the adapters that *do* support SCSI start/stop. There's a
   (probably incomplete) list near the bottom of
   
   http://www.nslu2-linux.org/wiki/FAQ/SpinDownUSBHarddisks

   However, it's hard to figure out which enclosure uses what adapter, and
   you still need something that will send scsi-stop commands to the
   drive.

I wouldn't suggest using the hot-swapping "solution" provided on that page,
for obvious reasons :)

-- 
Martijn van Buul - pino@dohd.org