Determining hard drive state

[Alan Dayley]

On Wed, Nov 25, 2009 at 4:22 PM, Kirk Bauer <kirk at kaybee.org> wrote:
> 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.

Interesting.  If I may ask, I'd like more details for my own education.

How do you know the drive is in standby?

How do you know when you are actually using the drive?

As you start using it, is there any latency or pause before the access
starts?  If so, how long does it last?  (Not looking for hard numbers,
just a felt guess.)

After you use it, how long before they go back to standby?

Did you do any special settings or configuration to achieve this behavior?

Alan