Hard Disk Sleep mode

[Mosabama]

I have a problem since about 2 years that I cannot find a solution for, I posted it in many forums with no luck, this is the first time I post it in linux forums.

My laptop Hard disk heats , it reached to 55 sometimes, so all the time I have acooling pad to make it in the range of 40s.

when I checked the cycle count by smart tools, I found out that the count doesn't increase at all. it means my Hard disk never spins down..

When I try "hdparm -y /dev/sda" it spins down and immediate spins up again. and of course the cycle count increases by one every time I use that command.

well ... when I use the command with the -Y it sleeps for a couple of seconds before it spins up again which actually decreased the temperature !

now I want to put that in a script to issue the hdparm -Y command every 5 minutes for example. but I dont know if that is healthy to the HD or not .. as I heard the hard disk is supposed to increase the cycle count by about 15 every hour .. so I guess its fine !

and I am looking for a way yo increase the write cache so linux doesn't have to spin up the hard disk after seconds of spin down..

I can use some advice from people who tried this before .. thanks

[Rubberman]

Have you tried the -B <n> option with hdparm? From the hdparm man page:

       -B     Set  Advanced  Power  Management  feature, if the drive supports it. A low
              value means aggressive power management and a high value means better per-
              formance. A value of 255 will disable apm on the drive.