Determining hard drive state

[Kirk Bauer]

For the record, I have both ntfs and ext4 partitions on the drive,
both mounted at all times under Ubuntu 9.10, and the drive remains in
a "standby" state except when I'm actually using the drives.

------------------------------------------------------
Kirk Bauer <kirk at kaybee.org>
http://linux.kaybee.org | www.logwatch.org
Author, Automating UNIX & Linux Administration



On Sat, Nov 14, 2009 at 12:49 PM, Matt Graham <danceswithcrows at usa.net> wrote:
> After a long battle with technology, Alan Dayley wrote:
>> On Sat, Nov 14, 2009 at 11:32 AM, Kirk Bauer <kirk at kaybee.org> wrote:
>>> I have a laptop with two hard drives: an SSD running Ubuntu 9.10 and a
>>> regular hard drive with Windows 7.  My hope is that the spinning drive
>>> is normally not spinning, but I can't hear it, and I can't figure out
>>> how to tell (from Linux) if it is powered on or not.
>
> "hdparm -C /dev/whatever" should tell you.  Disks that are spinning show up as
> active/idle, disks that are not should be standby or sleeping.  Disks that
> are USB give me a set of weird SCSI errors and "unknown", though, so YMMV on
> this.
>
>> By default, if the hard drive has power, it is spinning.  Unless the
>> host computer commands it to spin down, it is spinning. Oh, and most any
>> command sent to the drive by the host will cause it to spin back up.  Linux
>> usually does not do this but configurations vary.
>
> In general, you won't be able to spin down any disk that
> contains / , /var , /usr , or /home unless nobody's logged in.
>
> --
>   I will rule you all with my iron fist.  YOU!  Obey the fist!
>   --Invader Zim
>  My blog: http://crow202.org/wordpress/
> Matt G|There is no Darkness in Eternity/But only Light too dim for us to see
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