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Keep large HDD from always spinning up (sh.itjust.works)
submitted 6 days ago by bridgeenjoyer@sh.itjust.works to c/linux@lemmy.world
11 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Hello,

so I have quite a few drives in my desktop, but the main one that really lags my system down is a 12TB (seagate ironwolf, yes i know..). It seems to spin up and down often, then whenever I open a file in nemo I get freezeups when the drive has to spin up.

I know my 2 issues, it's an ironwolf, and I have it formatted as NTFS (because when I got it I was moving from windows to linux and kind of needed NTFS to still be there for windows. But now, I don't have a way to offload it all to reformat as EXT4.

Is there a way to keep it spun up for longer? My power saving shouldn't be doing anything with drives but i'm unsure.

I'm on Mint (yay noobs)

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[-] joulethief@discuss.tchncs.de 8 points 6 days ago

What's the issue with Ironwolf disks?

[-] bridgeenjoyer@sh.itjust.works 1 points 3 days ago

I mean, they're cheaper, and I've personally had several fail (desktop use, not banged up or anything like that)

[-] anime_ted@lemmy.world 7 points 6 days ago

You might check out the hdparm utility. It should allow you to set drive sleep parameters.

[-] tyler@programming.dev 6 points 6 days ago

Wait, what’s the problem with ironwolf? I just got one. I thought they were good

[-] bridgeenjoyer@sh.itjust.works 1 points 5 days ago

I thought they are kind of bottom of the barrel. Ive had a few fail.

[-] kalkulat@lemmy.world 4 points 6 days ago

You might be looking for the HDPARM command ...

https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/linux-unix/hdparm-command-in-linux-with-examples/

I remember playing with this one for my measley 4Tb drive: LOts of options:

-S Set the standby timeout for the drive. A value of 0 disables standby mode.

[-] bridgeenjoyer@sh.itjust.works 1 points 5 days ago

Thank you much I'll need to learn that one !

[-] BCsven@lemmy.ca 2 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

If I'm recalling correctly GNOME disks has a menu option for drive parameters so you can set stuff if the drive supports it.

Edit: Something like this tabbed menu With Standby and Power Management

[-] bridgeenjoyer@sh.itjust.works 1 points 3 days ago

Oh great, that's what I wanted - I'll have to see if I have that option or if i need to install adb.

[-] Shadow@lemmy.ca 2 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

hdparm

[-] frongt@lemmy.zip 1 points 6 days ago

Well, you could set a cron job to touch a file every minute. I would start by checking the BIOS and OS power settings though.

Unless it's USB. In that case it's probably all handled by the internal controller and the cron job is your best bet.

this post was submitted on 22 Aug 2026
16 points (100.0% liked)

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