Spin down USB hard drive?

[bhennigar]

I'm using a USB hard drive as a backup target. I realized today that the disk is spinning all day even though the backups only run at night.

Is there a way to have the disk 'sleep' during the day and only turn on at night for the backups?

I'm going to test it but one site suggested adding noatime to the fstab for the usb drive.

I've heard mixed opinions of keeping a drive running 24/7 vs powering it on/off all of the time. What would you suggest?

Thanks!

 

[knireis]

If your drive supports spindown, then this will be able to do so. But many usb drives don't support spindown. The WD Elements series does.
http://code.google.com/p/spindown/