[Bug 875719] Re: hdparm does not spin down hard disk on inactivity timeout

[Christoph Bier]

I just installed hdparm v9.37 from source. I set the S option to 1 (5
seconds) and it worked. But 20 seconds later the disk spun up again (I
did not access it). So I tried the Ubuntu version of hdparm with -S set
to 1---and it worked, too. But the disk spun up again after 20 seconds.
I guess Ubuntu's hdparm is not broken but some process accessing the
disk prevents the disk to spin down which only occurs with -S set up
high enough. How can I detect which process prevents the disk from
spinning down?

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/875719

Title:
  hdparm does not spin down hard disk on inactivity timeout

Status in “hdparm” package in Ubuntu:
  Confirmed

Bug description:
  First off, I'd like to mention that hdparm -S worked with 10.10. But
  with 11.04 my external hard disk (Seagate) connected via eSATA
  ExpressCard on a ThinkPad X200s doesn't spin down anymore on
  inactivity timeout set to 12 (1 minute). I'm still able to spin down
  the disk with the -y option---but a few seconds later it spins up
  again. This hard disk is my backup disk and only in use every 4 hours
  by a cron job.

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