[mythtv-users] Using X10 to power on external hard drives

[Steve Peters - Priority Electronics]

>hdparm doesn't spin down hard drives connected over USB.  (It 
>probably doesn't 
>work over FireWire either, but I've not checked.)  sg_start 
>(part of sg3_utils) 
>will spin down USB drives; it's what I use (within a shell 
>script run as a cron 
>job) to spin down the external drives that I use for movies and music.
>

Sq_start would be nice, but, does running sq_start (or hdparm for that
matter) actually increase the lifespan of the drives since they're still
powered on? I have too many drives to go out and buy backup drives for all
of them (or to burn dvd backups) so I really want to do whatever is best in
order to stretch the lifespan of the drives out as much as possible.

-Thanks
-Steve