Good day to all! I was wondering how would I be able to spin down the hard drives connected to my bananapi media/file server to save power and reduce wear and tear. Thank you in advance!

I also plan on using two solutions at once. Hdparm seems to spin down the second hard drive on my system but not the first and the last drive. Is using another app for the other two effective or may interfere with hdparm?

Not all USB drive is responding to "hdparm -y", some will some other won't ...

Also, I'm not aware how to wake up those sleeping drivers without having to unplug them and re-plug them, even some need to to be power recycled ...

 

I think "hdparm -y" will allow HDD to enter standby mode where kernel should be able to wake it normally and resume operation.  At least it works that way with my Orico USB bay and Toshiba P300 HDD. On the other side "hdparm -Y" (notice big "Y") puts disk to sleep immediately and it disappears from kernel. Just my 2 cents.

Edited October 10, 20179 yr by sparrow1

Right ! But that depends of the USB-SATA controler.

For example, with JMicron controler, doing a sleep on HDD make the USB-SATA desappearing on the USB bus, so it seems no way to wake it up using /dev/sda.

 

UPDATE: DID IT! A LONG TIME AGO (AND WASN'T ABLE TO COME BACK TO IMMEDIATELY UPDATE EVERYONE)

For those who are about to ask for the same question on the internet this is the answer.

 

I used hd-idle and it worked perfectly among my drives.

 

follow this guide:

https://www.htpcguides.com/spin-down-and-manage-hard-drive-power-on-raspberry-pi/

 

ymmv depending on the drives you use (if the hard drives can support it)

 

hd-idle perfectly worked on my old western digital and seagate hard drives but not perfectly on my seagate barracuda green hard drives (I think because of power management within the firmware of my hard drive so I had to turn off hd-idle altogether)

 

you can find on the link other alternatives to the one I used in case it didn't work for you

 

thanks for everyone who answered my inquiries!