I recently got a LaCie 2TB Thunderbolt bus-powered USB external rugged drive. I am using it with the Raspberry Pi 2 and it works fine. It's being used as a remote backup via rsync.
However, I am use to not leaving a rugged drive powered up all the time. I see no way to power down the LaCie drive when it's not needed for extended periods of time. My experience with self-powered LaCie rugged drives (larger in physical size) is that they run hot to the touch if left on all day even if there is no activity to the drive.
Does the Raspberry Pi 2 put external USB hard disks to sleep after a certain period of inactivity? If so, can this timer(?) be controlled? What is the default?
Best Answer
On the Raspberry (I am assuming you use Rasbian), hdparm must be installed,
and then you must reboot the RPI in order to allow hdparm to interface itself correctly with
udev
.will print all of the known characteristics of the device. It is long, and unwieldy, but very thorough.
You are searching for the properties related to Power Management. The ever helpful Arch Linux Wiki says:
You query the current value of (for instance) B as:
and you set it as
and likewise for
-S
.Once again the ever-helpful states:
This should allow you to configure power management to your liking.