>> Well, that's not exactly correct.  There are IDLE and STANDBY commands
>> that put the drive in the designated mode.  You don't "start" from that;
>> the next command wakes up the drive.  There's also SLEEP, which requires
>> a reset to spin up the drive (see atactl(8) for examples).
>
>I can't see how this is not correct: I can't send a "start" command to the
>disk before sending a read/write when in idle or standby mode.

I said "not exactly correct".  There's a "stop" equivalant, and you can
use _anything_ as a start command (since by definition you wake up
when you get any command).  If you want, you could call "identify"
the start command :-)

>sleep is another problem, but I don't think it's used that much (since
>there's no timer for this mode).

Yeah, I'm not sure how much it's used either.

--Ken