Automatic Disk Standby using Kernel diskstats and hdparm

hdd-spindown.sh is a rather simple Bash script that enables automatic disk standby for drives that do not support timeout-based spindown by firmware (e.g. -S parameter for hdparm).

hdd-spindown.sh is best run via systemd, using the service unit provided. In order to enable it, simply issue

$ systemctl enable hdd-spindown.service

and adapt configuration file /etc/hdd-spindown.rc to suit your needs.

Apart from coreutils the following is required:

• smartctl: for detection of drive status and SMART self-checks
• hdparm for actually initiating drive standby
• grep for utility output parsing

The following is optional, depending on the features used:

• logger if syslog interface enabled
• ping if host monitoring enabled

hdd-spindown.sh uses a simple shell-style configuration file for setting the disks to monitor. An example may look like this:

# configuration file for hdd-spindown.sh

CONF_INT=300

CONF_DEV=( "ata-WDC_WD50EFRX-68MYMN1_WD-WX31DA43KKCY|5400" \
           "ata-WDC_WD50EFRX-68MYMN1_WD-WX81DA4HNEH5|5400" \
           "ata-WDC_WD20EARS-00MVWB0_WD-WCAZA5755786|5400" \
           "ata-WDC_WD20EARS-00MVWB0_WD-WMAZA3570471|5400" )

CONF_INT specifies the monitoring interval in seconds while CONF_DEV features a list of devices to monitor, as well as their timeout value in seconds, separated by the pipe symbol '|'.

Note that devices may be specified using their ID (as shown) or device name (e.g. 'sda'). The interval option may be omitted, which sets the default interval of 5 minutes.

For a complete list of options please see the example hdd-spindown.rc.

I have replaced all of my rotating disks with flash based storage. I will happily accept pull requests for improvements or bug fixes, but I will not be able to test anything myself.

This software is released under the terms of the MIT License, see file LICENSE.