Sleepmode for ATAdisks?

[Joachim Dagerot]

I have been told that freeBSD can't handle powermanagement for IDE
disks, instead that should be tuned in BIOS.

However I also found this post with some kind of patch: 
http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-current/2003-September/0104
10.html

Though I'm in the computer business since late 80's my knowledge and
interests in patches etc are none, can someone please tell me if this
patch will help my freeBSD to power down non used IDE disks?

regards,
joachim