I have a Western Digital Premium drive formatted as NTFS which I use both in Windows XP and openSUSE 10.3. It would be nice if my linux machine could use the same power management features as windows. What I mean by this?

Windows:
1. When the drive has been inactive for some while it powers down (turns off). When I request data from the drive after such a period, the drive spins up, and I can reach my data.
2. When I disconnect the drive (safely remove) from windows, but the cable is still attached, the drive is totally shut off (lights go out). With the power button it can be turned on again.

openSUSE 10.3
1. When the drive is mounted (but not in use), it is *NEVER* powered down, keeps active. If the drive is connected, but unmounted some power management is done after some time by the drive itself with spinning down, but the power (lights) keep on.
2. When the drive is 'safely removed' (unmounted, but cable still attached) basically nothing happens except for the unmount. The power-leds are still on, drive is still spinning.

What I would like is for the drive to power down when unmounted, irrelevant of using the USB or Firewire connection. Is this possible? Or has windows beaten Linux once again?



P.S. I've found some possible answer here but this needs manual running and intervention, which I'd rather not do as it'd be probably forgotten more often than not. It just needs to work.q