Re: Disk idle timeouts

[Manuel Bouyer <bouyer%antioche.eu.org@localhost>]

On Sun, Nov 22, 2009 at 01:58:08PM +0200, Jukka Ruohonen wrote:
> Hi.
> 
> I would like to experiment with powerd(8) and disk idle timeouts, but I do
> not quite know where to start, as I have never done this in any operating
> system.
> 
> How do I know what are the default values the drive is using?

AFAIK there's no mechanism to retrive these values from a ATA drive.

> 
> How dangerous can this generally be?

It depends on the hard drive. Some of them have a limited number of sart/stop
count and using standby mode can significantly shorten their life.
Others are designed for typical desktop applications; for these it's
leaving them spun up 24x7 which can be harmfull.

SMART can usually give details about this.

> 
> Any idea on sane values to try?

On my laptop I use 5s for idle and 10s for standby.

-- 
Manuel Bouyer, LIP6, Universite Paris VI.           
Manuel.Bouyer%lip6.fr@localhost
     NetBSD: 26 ans d'experience feront toujours la difference
--