Date   : Tue, 14 Feb 2006 16:33:10 +0000 (GMT)
From   : Tim Fardell <tim.fardell@...>
Subject: Re: On/off Switcihes for IDE drives ?

On Tue, 14 Feb 2006, Sprow wrote:

> Modern IDE drives can be configured to have an IDE spin down delay, which
> probably does what you want.
> 
> I'm afraid I'm not sure whether the filing system has to actively say "oy -
> spin back up again" before carrying on, without reading through the dreary
> ATA specification,

Isn't there also "motor off now" and "power off now" commands? (Obviously 
they are not the correct terms!) If you've done the "power off now" one, 
you have to do a bus reset to bring it back to life. 

I seem to recall the man page for the hdparm utility on Linux being very
informative.