>In message <200001180531.AAA10355@ginger.cmf.nrl.navy.mil>, Ken Hornstein write
>>Really?  What does it do/not do?  BTW .... try taking out the setidle,
>>I only use standby (I get the sense most drives ignore the idle timer,
>>but I could see it causing weird effects).
>
>What seems to happen is that, after 5-10 minutes, the drive will spin down,
>and then about 5-10 seconds later, it'll spin up.

Hmph.  That's rather strange.  That almost sounds like your BIOS is sending
the idle command to your drives.  Have you tried turning off the power
management stuff in the BIOS?

>Wow.  I'm actually not as concerned about power saving as I am about disk
>lifetime, for which I've been told spindown is almost always a loss.

I'd be interested in hearing something more concrete about that.

--Ken