Spinning down the disks

From: Stefan Monnier (monnier_at_iro.umontreal.ca)
Date: 05/11/04 

Date: Tue, 11 May 2004 14:11:48 GMT

Other than delaying disk writes in general (as done in laptop-mode),
is there a way to prevent some kinds of file-system modifications
from ever triggering a spin-up (i.e. allow them to be delayed potentially
indefinitely as long as there's no other disk activity)?

I'm thinking here of time stamps on inodes.
I'm already using `noatime', but I have some programs here that end up
doing nothing else but change the mtime of some inodes.
This is the case e.g. for FIFOs where (used by Postfix) but also for
situations where a file is created and then deleted with the only
file-system modification left being the directory's mtime.

Any idea?
I'd like my disks to stay spun-down more than 10 minutes at a time (when
there's no real file-save) but without having to delay a real file-save by
more than 10 minutes.

        Stefan