SATA HAT hard disk sleep function

[usman]

I purchased the NanoPi M4 few days back along with SATA HAT. it is running fine but i have noticed that the hard disks keep spinning constantly when not in use even when they are not mounted. Usually the HDD spins down after some time if not in use but not with the SATA HAT. If i connect the same HDDs with other SBC's directly they spin down after some time if not used and spin up when accessed again.

Want to ask if SATA HAT controller does support spinning the HDD down (sleep mode) or not? If it does support that how can I enable this. It is important for longer life of HDD that they spin down as I am not using NAS drives.

[kirkdis]

yes it supports this option. use OpenMediaVaultfor nanopi M4. In the drive options you can set the time how long the drive has to be idle to spin down seperately for each drive.

I realized it only works with this hard and software combination for sata drives. USB drives are not spinning down...

[igorp]

It should also work from CLI.

NAME
hdparm - get/set SATA/IDE device parameters

SYNOPSIS
hdparm [options] [device ...]

DESCRIPTION
hdparm provides a command line interface to various kernel interfaces supported by the Linux SATA/PATA/SAS "libata" subsystem and the older IDE driver
subsystem. Many newer (2008 and later) USB drive enclosures now also support "SAT" (SCSI-ATA Command Translation) and therefore may also work with
hdparm. E.g. recent WD "Passport" models and recent NexStar-3 enclosures. Some options may work correctly only with the latest kernels.

[usman]

Thanks @igorp

I was able to set the spin down time using the gnome-disk-utility and now the drives spin down at the set time.