Hello,

I have my hard disk set to timeout after a given period of time through the BIOS, however, when I have Red Hat 9 booted, the disk never times out. I'd like to set it to time out after 10 minutes of no access to get as much life from my drive as possible.

Anyone know how to accomplish this? Thanks.

You think powering down your hard drive will save your hard drive. This is not true. Every time the drive shuts down and turns back on. It decreases the lifetime of the hard drive. If you are doing to save power or using the computer in a quiet environement. Then yes you can do that for saving power or a quiet environment.

You can use hdparm to power off your hard drive using a script or if you are running KDE. You can change the power energy settings in KDE. I think there is an apm configuration file too. You can also use cron to turn it off.

Cooling your hard drive increases its lifetime. You can use fans or water cooling.

Hmm, thanks.

Are there any particular fans you would recommend? i.e. speeds, etc. I have a Maxtor Diamond Max 7200 rpm 80 GB drive.

Do a search for "quiet computing" and you'll find dozens of sites offering fans and other cooling devices, including, probably, some for your particular drive. Since so many drives are the same size, I imagine there are lots of cooling devices that would fit your drive, even if it's not specified by name.

The quiet-computing sites are interesting reading, too!