spinmedown – Simple script for timed spindown of disk drives

Summary

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.

Installation

Copy the spinmedown script to somewhere in your path, like ~/bin. Symlinking works too.

Usage

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.

Crontab example

# 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.