How to prevent HDD spin-down.

[Johan Hendriks]

Op 06/03/2018 om 03:37 schreef J.B.:
> Hey. I purchased a new WD laptop hard disk drive, but it keeps
> spinning down and parking its heads after 25 seconds of inactivity.
> How can I disable that feature or extend the timeout to something less
> idiotic? I checked the BIOS, but there's no setting for it. I booted
> into a Linux (Debian-based) OS duel-booting on the same disk, and the
> disk doesn't spin down, so either Linux is doing something to override
> that feature, or FreeBSD is doing something to enable it (possibly a
> package I installed). Thanks.
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I do not think linux is doing something special. I think the disk on
Linux do not spin down because the OS is touching the disk every so
second for log or other things. Just install a fresh Ubuntu with no
special options and boot it. You will see disk activity every x seconds
even when the box is idle.
On FreeBSD however there is almost no disk activity if a box is idle. So
the disks is not touched for 25 seconds and the disk will spindown.

If you are using Western Digital disks, there is a utility you can run
to disable this feature or give it a timeout large enough so the os has
touched the disk. It has been a long time since i used it and if i
remember it worked only in DOS or windows. Just use google and search
for your disk and disable headparking.

regards
Johan Hendriks