---
name: "scsi-spin"
section: "8"
platform: "linux"
package: "scsitools"
version: "0.12-6"
release: "Debian 13 (Trixie)"
platforms: ["linux"]
url: "https://new.carta.tech/scsi-spin"
---

# scsi-spin(8)

spin up and down a SCSI device

## 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 supported 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 verbose, 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/\<aliasname\>.*

### 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 compatibility entries" naming scheme is enabled.

## SEE ALSO

[**scsiinfo**(8)](/scsiinfo/8.md), [**sg\_start**(8)](/sg_start/8.md), [**sd**(4)](/sd/4.md), [**proc**(5)](/proc/5.md),

## AUTHORS

Eric Delaunay \<delaunay@debian.org\>, 2001\
 Rob Browning \<rlb@cs.utexas.edu\>, 1998