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. 34 35