ata explicit idle/standby

[Michael Weiser]

On Sun, Jun 19, 2005 at 02:22:41AM +0930, Daniel O'Connor wrote:
> > I've done a small patch to the -CURRENT atacontrol and ata driver to
> > allow explicit switch of drives to idle or standby mode and query the
> > current mode. I use it to spin down disks needed only very inregularly.
> > If extended by a means to set the idle timeout this might be
> > particularly useful to notebook users as well.
> Yes.. 
> Combine with 
> http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-mobile/2003-May/000681.html to 
> allow you to turn the drive off for a reasonable amount of time :)

> (That diff doesn't apply directly but it's trivial to apply by hand)

In my case I dismount the disks anyway, so I don't need to hold off
cache flushes and the like.

> > Or have I actually missed the some already present functionality to
> > achieve the same?
> There is a port (ataidle) which does this but I think having it in atacontrol 
> is a good idea.

I went to patching because ataidle is broken on 6.0-CURRENT.
-- 
bye,
Micha