1Source: hd-idle
2Section: utils
3Priority: extra
4Maintainer: Christian Mueller <cm1@mumac.de>
5Build-Depends: debhelper (>= 7.0.50~), libc6-dev
6Standards-Version: 3.8.4
7Homepage: http://hd-idle.sf.net
8#Vcs-Git: git://git.debian.org/collab-maint/hd-idle.git
9#Vcs-Browser: http://git.debian.org/?p=collab-maint/hd-idle.git;a=summary
10
11Package: hd-idle
12Architecture: any
13Depends: ${shlibs:Depends}, ${misc:Depends}
14Description: Spin down idle [USB] hard disks
15 hd-idle is a utility program for spinning-down external disks after a period
16 of idle time. Since most external IDE disk enclosures don't support setting
17 the IDE idle timer, a program like hd-idle is required to spin down idle disks
18 automatically.
19 .
20 A word of caution: hard disks don't like spinning up too often. Laptop disks
21 are more robust in this respect than desktop disks but if you set your disks
22 to spin down after a few seconds you may damage the disk over time due to the
23 stress the spin-up causes on the spindle motor and bearings. It seems that
24 manufacturers recommend a minimum idle time of 3-5 minutes, the default in
25 hd-idle is 10 minutes.
26 .
27 One more word of caution: hd-idle will spin down any disk accessible via the
28 SCSI layer (USB, IEEE1394, ...) but it will not work with real SCSI disks
29 because they don't spin up automatically. Thus it's not called scsi-idle and
30 I don't recommend using it on a real SCSI system unless you have a kernel
31 patch that automatically starts the SCSI disks after receiving a sense buffer
32 indicating the disk has been stopped. Without such a patch, real SCSI disks
33 won't start again and you can as well pull the plug.
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