idle3ctl.8

.TH IDLE3CTL 8 "January 2011" "Version 0.9"

.SH NAME
idle3ctl \- disable, get or set the idle3 timer on Western Digital HDD
.SH SYNOPSIS
.B idle3ctl
[ flags ] [device] ..
.SH DESCRIPTION
.BI idle3ctl
can disable, get and set the value of the infamous idle3 timer found
on recent Western Digital Hard Disk Drives. 
.BI Idle3ctl 
can be used
as an alternative to the official wdidle3.exe proprietary utility,
without the need to reboot in a DOS environement.
.BI Idle3ctl 
is an independant project, unrelated in any way to 
Western Digital Corp.
.PP
.B THIS SOFTWARE IS EXPERIMENTAL, NOT WELL TESTED AND ACCESSES  LOW LEVEL INFORMATION OF YOUR HARDDRIVE. USE AT YOUR OWN RISK.
.SH OPTIONS
When no flags are given,
.B -g
is assumed.
.TP
.I -h 
Display help
.TP
.I -V
Show version and exit
.TP
.I -v
activate verbose output, mainly useful for debugging.
.TP
.I --force
force execution even if no Western Digital HDD are detected
.TP
.I -g
get raw idle3 timer value
.TP
.I -g100
get idle3 timer value as wdidle3 v1.00 would display it
.TP
.I -g103
get idle3 timer value as wdidle3 v1.03 would display it
.TP
.I -d
disable idle3 timer
.TP
.I -s<value>
set idle3 timer raw value. Value must be an integer between 1 and 255.
The idle3 timer is set in 0.1s for the 1-128 range, and in 30s for the 129-255 range.
.TP
.I --cdb12
Use 12-bytes cdbs (default is 16-bytes cdbs)
.SH BUGS
Please report any bugs on the sourceforge tracker at 
.B https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=329372&atid=1381968
.SH EXIT STATUS
.B idle3ctl
will return zero on success and non zero on failure.
.SH AUTHOR
.B idle3ctl
has been written by Christophe Bothamy <cbothamy at users.sf.net>.
.SH SEE ALSO
.B http://idle3-tools.sourceforce.net
Idle3-tools website
.TP
.B http://www.wdc.com/
Western Digital website