hdparm spindown of "non-IDE" hard drive . . . or sdparm or ?

[jenaniston]

I am running a jerry-rig USB OS (Ubuntu 9.04) - originally installed from a U9.04 Live USB on a campus Dell computer -
but now being used to boot up a "sick" unbootable Sharp AL27 laptop to recover files and eventually re-partition for a full linux install - probably Fedora 12.

I am actually amazed that this generic kernel in Ubuntu 9.04 - fully installed to a USB pendrive on a different machine -
can even recognize enough of the laptop hardware to let me into the recovery mode root terminal.

Anyway, as I work with this USB pendrive OS on the laptop, the hard drive - with a non-functioning WindowsXP OS partition -
- not mounted - just spins non-stop . . . and will get really hot - and smelling "burning hot".

I need to spin down this hard drive - no usuable OS is on it, and I don't think hdparm recognizes it though.
It is /dev/sda by sfdisk -l . . . the USB OS is /dev/sdb

What can be used to spindown this laptop non-IDE hard disk . . .?

sdparm seems to me like it offers very different capabilities, at least compared to what hdparm does for IDE drives.

Any ideas ?

It is a very good possibility the laptop hardware is not being correctly identified (HAL),
as this USB OS needed to be installed using a different computer.

Thank you very much for any suggestions or criticism.

[oz]

Yes, sdparm should work for spinning down a sata drive, and that's what I use. There are various simple scripts that can be found online for doing this. Once your script is in place and working, you can create a launcher right on your desktop if you wish to make it a simple one-click process to spin down the drive.