On Mon, 31 Oct 2005, Alistair Hamilton wrote:
What laptop_mode does is cache lots of disc accesses so allowing the hdd to spin down and thereby save battery. This is certainly a risky thing to do, since data can be lost. However, many people believe that the slight risk is worth the increased battery life.
My wee Dell X1 is almost silent (no fan and an inaudible hda) and it is difficult to hear the disc. However, I think it runs all the time. The battery life is much shorter in Linux than in Windows. Past laptops of mine used other Linux distros that included laptop_mode, and enabling it, so spinning down the disc, improved battery life considerably.
So, what I am missing is what laptop_mode does -- spin down the disc a lot of the time by caching slightly dangerously.
Have you had a look at /etc/sysconfig/powersave/disk yet? It should have all the options that you are looking for. Regards Christoph