How to spin down second HD
 

I have two internal HD's in my system. One is the primary HD and I have all my stuff on it. The other is basically only for movies and stuff that I don't want to clutter my main drive with.
I have windows 7 and Mint Debian with Gnome 3 and XFCE installed in my system and in both windows 7 and xfce, the second drive spins down after about 10 - 15 min. On Gnome 3 however this does not happen. I was wondering if there is any way I can make the second drive spin down after a certain amount of time in gnome.
I'm asking because I work on this system and many times, don't even mount the second HD. Just thought that doing this will save a bit of wear and tear on the drive and hopefully increase its life.

XFCE has in its power manager an option to spin down drives. Maybe you have a similar option in Gnome's power manager.

Thanks for that Tobi, but that was what I checked first. The new Gnome 3 power manager is completely different from the earlier one and it doesn't have that option. I was checking here if anyone knew of an app or something that could do the same thing.

Why not just use XFCE's power-manager if you have both installed anyways?

You can use the hdparm command to control your drive. The command "hdparm -S 120 /dev/<device name>" will spin down the drive after 10 minutes, for example. You can insert this command into /etc/init.d/rc.local (or whatever the equivalent init script is on your distribution). Make sure to check the hdparm(8) manpage for an explanation of 120 in the command example, that way you can configure the drive to spin down at any timeout you wish.

Tobi:
The XFCE power manager does not work for Gnome 3. As I said, when I'm on XFCE, the disc spins down. Just doesn't happen in Gnome.
overlook:
Thanks for that. Will give it a shot and let you know how it goes.