1

I'm a new Ubuntu user. I use an old Toshiba notebook(which got a HDD manufactured by Toshiba) for work and recently installed Xubuntu in it. This old Toshiba HDD has overheating problem so after decreasing Swappiness I went to change the HDD spin-down time (the amount of inactivity time after which the HDD will spin-down).

I've downloaded the "Disks" app (gnome-disks-utility) from Store. I've opened it, selected my HDD and gone to Drive Settings. Under Standby tab, I've turned Apply Standby Timeout Settings on and set the standby time to 15 minutes.

I left the APM option disabled under the APM tab. Did it get the job done? When I type sudo hdparm -S /dev/sda, still I get this answer: 

-S: bad/missing standby-interval value (0..255)

Plus, what should be the ideal spin-down and APM settings that would mimic Windows? I don't wanna wear it down faster than it should.

Update: I found out that the "Apply Advanced Power Management Settings(APM)" option also has to be turned on and its value has to be equal or less than 127 to make spindown work. Unbelievable work for a simple thing which the OS should've done for you in the first place.

HattinGokbori87
  • 1,665
  • FYI: some drives - such as WD Greens - will ignore these kinds of settings and turn themselves off whenever they please. For the WD Greens, the only way to change the timeout is to boot to a DOS environment and run a program which changes a value in the firmware AFAIK. – You'reAGitForNotUsingGit Aug 28 '17 at 18:03
  • @AndroidDev: hdparm -J will get or set the "idle3" value on WD Green disks, just like wdidle3 in MS-DOS... in principle. It worked for me on several different disks. – AlexP Aug 28 '17 at 19:25
  • @AlexP Huh, interesting... – You'reAGitForNotUsingGit Aug 28 '17 at 20:22

0 Answers0