spinmedown – Simple script for timed spindown of disk drives
spinmedown is a script that can be called repeatedly to check whether a disk
drive has been accessed in the meantime, and to spin it down if it has not.
This is useful for USB drives that do not enter standby/power-saving
mode automatically.
The script should be able to run fine on most Unix/Linux shells and requires hdparm[1] as its only dependency. It also requires sysfs, and therefore an operating system based on the Linux kernel.
Copy the spinmedown script to somewhere in your path, like ~/bin.
Symlinking works too.
spinmedown fsuuid
fsuuid is a valid filesystem UUID. Use the blkid command for a list of
active mounts. Then call the script in a regular interval corresponding to the
desired disk drive timeout.
# Spin down USB HD if idle for 30 minutes
*/30 * * * * root spinmedown 01234567-89ab-cdef-0123-456789abcdef
If using /etc/cron.d, make sure to set up the PATH correctly in the file, and
that it is chowned to root.