After my HDDs did not want to move into standby mode (spin-down) after the set time or too early, I was looking for an alternative to the power management of the HDDs.

I have 4 different HDDs, from different manufacturers with different sizes in a BTRFS Raid1 array. Theoretically, all 4 HDDs should behave the same, but some go into standby mode when activating the power saving mode during operation, others not at all ...

While researching for a solution, I came across hd-idle.

This variant is completely independent from the firmware, i.e. from the power management of the hard disk: The service monitors the access to all hard disks and treats them all the same. Of course, the power management of the hard disk should be deactivated for this.

Installation

apt-get install debhelper
mkdir hd-idle_download
cd hd-idle_download
wget sourceforge.net/projects/hd-idle/files/hd-idle-1.05.tgz
tar xvfz hd-idle*.tgz
cd hd-idle
dpkg-buildpackage
sudo apt-get install build-essential
dpkg-buildpackage
cd ..
dpkg -i hd-idle_*.deb

sudo nano /etc/default/hd-idle

# start hd-idle automatically?
START_HD_IDLE=true

timeout to 20minutes

HD_IDLE_OPTS="-i 1200 -l /var/log/hd-idle.log"

Control with:

service --status-all

or

sudo service hd-idle status

start with:

sudo service hd-idle start

stop with:

sudo service hd-idle stop