How To Allow External Hdd To Spin Down?

[pingtiao]

Hopefully this is the right place for this- please advise if not...

 

I am running btsync on my raspberry pi, which is permanently switched on with an external 1TB USB drive attached.

Previous to adding btsync the USB drive went into auto-spindown when I had nothing using the disk for 10 minutes. 

 

I am syncing my photography directory from my laptop to the pi (one directional).

 

The problem is that even with my laptop switched off btsync is still keeping the drive running.

Is this inescapable?

I had hoped that the drive would be idle until my laptop tried to connect to the btsync torrent.

 

Do I just have to live with this?

 

Cheers in advance

 

 

[piotrnik]

You could extend the rescan interval in advanced options.  I believe the default is 10 minutes, which would cause spinup (or to not spin down if shorter than your sleep interval).  You could extend it to 2-4 hours.  There is the downside that it may not recognize changes and not start syncing until that automatic rescan though, just so you are aware. 

[pingtiao]

Thanks for the reply.

I'd thought of that, but it removes the utility of the system. My laptop is the "source", and as a laptop is only transiently switched on during the day. I want to take advantage of any up time to sync.

What I don't understand is what exactly the btsync on the "destination" is *doing*. The source is not online, consequently there are no seeds to download from. Why is it checking the destination files?

I suspect that in the absence of a stylish way of sorting this out ill just have a script that continually checks to see if the laptop is online, and when it drops off the network then terminates the btsync process, restarting it upon spying the laptop on the network.

That will unfortunately require another forum to post newbie questions in as I learn to write the script!