Seagate Freeagent auto-off - can I disable?

[lost eden]

I just bought a new 320GB Seagate 'Freeagent' external USB hard drive & it's all nice & peachy - except for it's auto-off feature. The drive spins down after a certain amount of time idle & this confuses/hangs my music playing software (Amarok) when I try to add new tracks to the playlist (because the drive is off!). So does anybody know of a way to disable this auto-off feature? Without voiding the 5-year warranty on the drive, of course...

[arthurleung]

Install the FreeAgent tool that came with the drive, and you can set sleep interval in there to "never"

[lost eden]

Oh, was there a disk in the box? I'll ahve to dig that out! I bet the software only works in Windows though...

Edit: nope, no disk in the box. Where is the tool meant to be?

[hitman67]

Was there anything on the drive when you got it? Or did you format or similar before you used it?

[lost eden]

I formatted the drive when I got it (NTFS ain't much use under Linux) but I made a copy of what was on it - all there is is a PDF that lays out the warranty conditions & System Volume Information. Is this fabled software perhaps only present on the Freeagent Pro drives?

[aidanjt]

`hdparm -Z /dev/sdXX' <-- I thought that would have been the obvious first look for a Linux user.

[lost eden]

`hdparm -Z /dev/sdXX' <-- I thought that would have been the obvious first look for a Linux user.

I was avoiding hdparm just in case it would void the warranty to alter the hardware parameters of the drive through a third-party application (e.g. anything other than Seagate's own tools).

Anyway, I just tried hdparm -Z & it failed with 'Invalid argument'.

Edit: got it - the Freeagent Tools only come on the Pro drives & Seagate don't link to the software on any of their publically-accessible webpages - I happenned across a link via some searching though. Thanks for the tips guys/gals, I've now got it set to never spin down.