trying to StandBy drive at startup

Question

I have 3 drives in my laptop, one of which is a mechanical hard drive for mass storage. I want to set this drive to standby because I want to preserve energy and keep my laptop silent at startup.

Command to do this: hdparm -Y /dev/sdb

things I've tried:

• add the command to startup applications https://i.sstatic.net/p63qr.png
• add the command to a script
• added aformentioned script + the command (both as sudo and non-sudo) in the /etc/rc.local https://i.sstatic.net/p2cFo.png

But the drive is still spinning when I start Ubuntu. Can anyone help?

system information:

• it's a toshiba mechanical drive
• Ubuntu 14.04
• laptop computer

Answer 1

I don't think you can prevent the hard drive from spinning up on boot. It is likely just your motherboard's POST or the BIOS probing the drive. Both actions are required for the hard drive to be accessible once you boot your Operating System.

The commands you posted in your question should indeed set the drive to standby after you login or during the Ubuntu boot process depending on which one you use.