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I recently went through a big effort of swapping my linux install over to my SSD, to gain speed and power savings.

However I can still hear the hard drive spinning sometimes, particularly for the first 30 or so seconds after coming out of sleep/boot etc.

The drive isn't mentioned in fstab, all there is on the drive is a windows partition and an ext4 position (brand new, untouched)

Is there a way to make linux ignore the disk, so it never spins up? Bonus points: Can it be done while still mounting a data partition, such that it spins up before doing any data read/writes?

Edit: Running linux mint 18.1 kernel 4.4.0-83, on an asus harman/kardon with a 120gb ssd and 1TB HDD.

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  • Stating kernel release and distro could help (and possibly relevant hardware info: laptop or motherboard model, disk...)
    – xenoid
    Jun 30, 2017 at 12:09
  • Looks like a duplicate of superuser.com/questions/543822/turning-off-unused-hard-drives (where the solution is to use hdparm and take advantage of the drive spin down capabilities).
    – xenoid
    Jun 30, 2017 at 13:53
  • It would be nice to know what the kernel is doing here, that it sends reads to unmounted devices (which can be observed in /proc/diskstats; it is not just power being applied). There may be tuneable kernel parameters to prevent this behavior.
    – fuzzyTew
    Mar 27, 2021 at 15:48
  • @fuzzyTew Interesting you broght this back up. The laptop has since melted its GPU (due to an errata that ASUS acknowledged and refused to fix) so it is no more.
    – Brydon Gibson
    Mar 29, 2021 at 13:59
  • I've had the same issue on a handful of systems. I'm inferring your gpu or motherboard was not stil within warrantee.
    – fuzzyTew
    Mar 30, 2021 at 0:21

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However I can still hear the hard drive spinning sometimes, particularly for the first 30 or so seconds after coming out of sleep/boot etc.

Actually there is no relation of hard disk spinning with the linux installation to other SSD. As long as the drive's plugged in physically and the system is up, it'll keep spinning. If you use any power saving mode, then it is supposed to turn off the power to the drive, making it spin down. But that must happen after you completely logged into the OS. But you can't stop the spinning physically without cutting out the power connection of hard disc from the power supply.

Is there a way to make linux ignore the disk, so it never spins up?

Yes that is possible somehow. This page has a good article describing the solution you were searching for. Follow the Spin down those HARD DRIVES section on that page. But they have also mentioned the risk of doing so in some hard disc. So, read the article carefully.

Can it be done while still mounting a data partition, such that it spins up before doing any data read/writes?

The article mentioned above describes all the pros and cons of doing so. So, you may find your answer there. Additionally here is another article may help you.

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    This is a reasonable answer but some important things are behind external links. If something happens to articles you linked to, your answer will be useless. It would benefit if you cited most crucial fragments. Any answer should be self-contained; links may be additions, not the core.
    – Kamil Maciorowski
    Jul 3, 2017 at 10:52

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