Greg Cormier <gcormier@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > hdparm -S240 /dev/sdX > But I'm fairly sure they are not spinning down :( Is there some > activity mdadm is doing in the background? There are lots of tools out there and likely installed on normal systems that do access disks at regular intervals: smartd, hddtemp, probably some hal-stuff, etc. pp. Most of them do not access disks in standby mode or can be configured to do so. But as long as disks are active, they keep accessing them and thus reset the disks standby timeout. If you use bitmaps on degraded arrays, depending on your kernel version even md could access disks at regular intervals, but this is probably less likely than some of the above mentioned tools. regards Mario -- Computer games don't affect kids; I mean if Pac-Man affected us as kids, we'd all be running around in darkened rooms, munching magic pills and listening to repetitive electronic music. -- Kristian Wilson, Nintendo Inc, 1989 -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-raid" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html