# phpman > man > scsi-spin(8) [scsi-spin(8)](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/man/scsi-spin/8/markdown) System Manager's Manual [scsi-spin(8)](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/man/scsi-spin/8/markdown) ## NAME scsi-spin - spin up and down a SCSI device ## SYNOPSIS **scsi-spin** **[-**_options..._**]** **[**_device_**]** ## DESCRIPTION **scsi-spin** let the user to manually spin up and down a SCSI device. This command is particularly useful if you've got noisy (or hot) drives in a machine that you rarely need to access. This is **not** the same as the kernel patch that's floating around that will automatically spin down the drive after some time. **scsi-spin** is completely manual, and spinning down a drive that's in use, especially the one containing the scsi-spin binary, is probably a **really** bad idea. To avoid running in trouble with such cases, **scsi-spin** verifies that the device to work on is not currently in use by scanning the mounted file system description file for a partition living on it and issue an error if this the case. ## OPTIONS ### -u, --up spin up device. ### -d, --down spin down device. ### -e, --loej load or eject medium from drive (use along with **-u** or **-d** ) ### -w, --wait=[n] wait up to **n** seconds for the spin up/down command to complete. Default is to return immediately after the command was sent to the device. Either repeat **-w** n times or set **n** to define the time to wait before to report a timeout. ### -l, --lock prevent removal of medium from device. ### -L, --unlock allow removal of medium from device. ### -I, --oldioctl use legacy ioctl interface instead of SG_IO to dialog with device (could not be sup‐ ported on all platforms). **-e** and **-w** are not allowed with this option. ### -v, --verbose=[n] verbose mode. Either repeat **-v** or set **n** accordingly to increase verbosity. 1 is ver‐ bose, 2 is debug (dump SCSI commands and Sense buffer). ### -f, --force force spinning up/down the device even if it is in use. ### -n, --noact do nothing but check if the device is in use. ### -p, --proc use /proc/mounts instead of /etc/mtab to determine if the device is in use or not. **device** the device is any name in the filesystem which points to a SCSI block device (sd, scd) or generic SCSI device (sg). See section below. ### SCSI devices naming convention ### Old kernel naming convention It is typically _/dev/sd[a-z]_ , _/dev/scd[0-9]*_ or _/dev/sg[0-9]*._ ### scsidev naming convention It is typically _/dev/scsi/s[rdg]h[0-9]*-e????c?i?l?_ or _/dev/scsi/._ ### devfs naming convention It is typically /dev/scsi/host[0-9]/bus[0-9]/target[0-9]/lun[0-9]/disc (same for cd and generic devices) or short name /dev/sd/c[0-9]b[0-9]t[0-9]u[0-9] when **devfsd** "new compatibil‐ ity entries" naming scheme is enabled. ## SEE ALSO [**scsiinfo**(8)](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/man/scsiinfo/8/markdown), **sg**___**[start**(8)](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/man/start/8/markdown), [**sd**(4)](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/man/sd/4/markdown), [**proc**(5)](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/man/proc/5/markdown), ## AUTHORS Eric Delaunay <>, 2001 Rob Browning <>, 1998 03 September 2001 [scsi-spin(8)](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/man/scsi-spin/8/markdown)