How do I get my disk powered down gracefully on my desktop during system shutdown

[owen at metamachine.com]

They only suggest you use runlevel 3 until things are working well for you -
easier to recover from problems.  Once things are working well you can go
back to runlevel 5.

But it would be nice if there was a way to do a shutdown from a logged out
runlevel 3 login prompt.  ctl-alt-delete does a reboot and you have to
catch it before it starts coming back up and hold down the power button.

That business about stopping the hard drive before power goes off isn't
strictly necessary, modern drives catch power down and swing the heads
back to the safe zone automatically.


  // Wally