[Dirvish] Ideas for cool running external hard drives

[Paul Slootman]

On Thu 02 Oct 2008, Loren M. Lang wrote:

> I currently am doing nightly backups of my server onto two USB hard
> drives that are rotated weekly.  A nightly backup only takes 30-45
> minutes on average, but the USB drives are left plugged in and running
> for a full week.  The USB enclosures are usually quiet warm during the

I have a WD MyBook (the original version, when 500GB was the largest you
could get) which spins down itself if idle for > 10 minutes. Spinup
happens automatically upon any access, and linux doesn't seem to mind
the short delay (I believe < 10s) while that's happening.

I've measured the power usage when spun down, and it's about 2 watts
which I find very good.


Paul Slootman