# Put hard drive in to sleep mode?



## Mayhem30 (Dec 18, 2010)

I have a box here running 7.3 (no X) that rsyncs backups from 12am - 4am every night. It does nothing else.

How can I set FreeBSD to put the hard drive in to sleep mode after 10 mins of inactvity?


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## jrm@ (Dec 18, 2010)

Mayhem30 said:
			
		

> I have a box here running 7.3 (no X) that rsyncs backups from 12am - 4am every night. It does nothing else.
> 
> How can I set FreeBSD to put the hard drive in to sleep mode after 10 mins of inactvity?



It depends of type of drive you have.  

I believe camcontrol() has options such as idle, standby, and sleep that might be helpful.  You can also check sysutils/smartmontools.

From my experience, having drives spin up and down a lot reduces their lifetime.  If you do decide to have them spin down you might want to check out tmpfs(5)().

Power consumption might be more effectively managed with powerd() and having your monitor(s) turn of when not is use.


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## Mayhem30 (Dec 18, 2010)

I managed to get atacontrol working, but everytime it went to sleep - it took 5 seconds and came back to life. So this is no longer a viable option for me.

Thank you for your time and explaination. You can mark this thread as solved.


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