I have a desktop system running Slack 11.0. I have a "main" drive, a SATA 250GB, and a "backup" drive, an IDE 80GB. I use `hdparm -y` to spin down the IDE drive when I'm not using it. I backup certain files from the SATA drive to the IDE drive about once a month. The problem is that the IDE drive spins back up quite often when there isn't any reason to access it. When any user logs out of KDE, it spins up. Sometimes it just spins up at random.

The IDE drive is as noisy as they come and I'd like it to remain in a spun-down standby state at ALL times unless I explicitly use hdparm to spin it up or issue a `mount` command. I have no idea why it is spinning up so often. It isn't mounted, nothing should need to access it, yet it spins up.

Is there a way to effectively prevent the drive from spinning up unless I explicitly issue a command to cause it to spin up? Or perhaps make it "invisible" to the system as a whole until I need to use it?

I'm wondering if a powersave type daemon is spinning down both drives after a certain period of inactivity and then later spinning them both back up, when you do something that would cause writing to one of them. Logging out of KDE or your shell might cause a sync command to empty out the caches. Another possibility is a background process like updatedb indexing the files. You might try adding "noauto" as a mount option in /etc/fstab to prevent the partitions on the drive from being mounted when you boot up. You will need to mount them manually then.
Another possibility is the udev or hal daemons access the drives for some reason.

Not sure if it means anything but is it set to automount in /etc/fstab.
Other thought rem out the mount line in /etc/fstab file for the line.
Might cause the system to not see it at all.
Might add the -s or is it -S for standy time. Make it as low as possible so if it spins up and no access it should be down quickly. Not a solution but to see if it is not being accessed by something.

Brian

I'm not using any daemons, in fact I'm using devfs with a 2.4.33.3 kernel. I'm not using neither dbus, hal, udev, laptop-type powersave systems, nor pmount-type tools. Its a dead-stock Slackware 11.0 install.

I haven't set up any powersave-type processes either. The drive is not even listed in /etc/fstab.

I simply use `mount` manually to mount it when I need it (about once a month) and `hdparm -y` to spin it down when I don't need it since it is quite loud.

There isn't anything on the drive's filesystem that should need to be accessed, I spin it up, mount it, use rsync to back up certain files, umount, and spin down. The problem is that it occasionally spins back up at random, when a user logs out of KDE, etc.

It is possible that KDE may be doing something that causes the drive to spin up. The system has been sitting at the KDM login prompt for a couple days now, and the drive hasn't spun up. I've done a few things at console without logging into KDE and that didn't cause the drive to spin up either.