On Sun, Dec 10, 2017 at 12:32 AM, Tim ignored_mailbox@yahoo.com.au wrote:
Allegedly, on or about 7 December 2017, Fulko Hew sent:
hdparm -B 255 /dev/sda
But on this machine/drive, it doesn't seem to work; or at least it only works for a short while, and then it starts unloading again.
It sounds like it does work, but something else is changing the settings on you later on.
I don't think you've said how long your change works for.
Well, I'm not too sure. Right now it feels intermittent and unrepeatable, at least with a value of 255 and/or 254. And I've tried using a 60 second interval 'touch' with those values. Some times the touch prevents the unload/load,and sometimes it doesn't. Again, I need to attempt a scientific analysis.
Today I've been trying 253 with the 60 second 'touch', and that HAS worked for 24 hours, so I declare that my official workaround (pending better test results).
I don't recall you saying what desktop you use. It may help people narrow down what might be periodically undoing your setting.
I use KDE, but there may be a few Gnome utilities/apps also installed. (And this is Fedora 26)