Comment 28 for bug 952556

Hi Steve,

I'll try and give it a shot (not tonight) ; however, in 15+ years of intensive daily Linux use, I am yet to see any Linux machine (in use) that can keep its disk spinned down for more than a minute, unless using the laptop-mode tools and appropriate FS and write-cache settings, which are not so easy to finely tune, and very specific to some netbook uses.

That's probably why "128" was the default value so far. I strongly believe that allowing disk spindown will never result in actual energy savings, *but* it may and will result in a much shortened HD life.

One who wants max energy savings has better go for "suspend" mode after a short inactivity period (let's says 5 or 10 minutes) rather than playing with HD spindown. it's a nonsense for any modern multitasking OS with crons and other tasks schedulers.