Turning off the harddisks during inactivity?

Hello all,

I run a Raspberry Pi 4 with Ubuntu Mate 20-04 as an NAS with two 3,5'' external harddisks.

My problem is: the harddisks did not turn off during inactivity in the night.

How can I enable something like an energy save mode for the harddisks?

Thanks in advance

Hi @JanH :slight_smile:
You can probably play with the hdparm command to manage it.

Thanks Olek, I will have a closer look on this command this afternoon.

Thanks Olek for the hint,

I followed the howto of this article: https://blog.buettner.xyz/festplatten-ubuntu-linux-16-04-server-inaktivitaet-standby/

Now I'll wait for 20 minutes to see if its works.

Edit: it works with my Intenso HDD, but the Seagate HDD is still running

Edit2: after a quick google I discovered, that my Seagate external HDDs aren't suported by hdparm :confused:

The best is to have a real NAS server with physical replication and power management.
It's not so expensive but better to take one with some smb version 3 support to avoid vulnerability related to smb v1.

try hd-idle. In my experience this works with many usb disks.
sudo apt install hd-idle

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