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I have a simple Ubuntu (12.10) server running with an external HDD attached to it. It is mounted regularly (NTFS) without RAID or so.

Because it is mounted all the time, the hard drives becomes very hot all the time, even when it is not used.

Is there a tool for automatically unmounting external HDs when they are idle and mount them when someone wants to open it? Or maybe there is another technology that can make this HD go to stand-by while mounted?

The last thing I can think of is making a CRON job to unmount and mount it at predefined intervals (during the night), but I'd prefer something more efficient.

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    The hd should go into a sleep state when idle, even if the filesystem is mounted. Oct 17, 2012 at 18:33
  • Well, that is not happening for sure, even in the morning when no one has been using it, it's hot, what it never was when I used it on my desktop. Oct 17, 2012 at 18:51
  • I think that's rather a power management issue, really. Oct 17, 2012 at 18:53

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autofs is a program for automatically mounting directories on an as-needed basis. Auto-mounts are mounted only as they are accessed, and are unmounted after a period of inactivity. Because of this, automounting NFS/Samba shares conserves bandwidth and offers better overall performance compared to static mounts via fstab.

head over this page to get more information for your case: Autofs - Community Ubuntu Documentation.

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    You should try to expand this answer a bit, typically just linking to a resource is not helpful, explaining it helps the OP much more. Oct 17, 2012 at 21:02

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