Can I spin down my internal disk? Open Firmware or terminal commands?

Hello all,
I have not been around here for a while, but I desperately need your help.
Does anyone know how I can spin down my internal disk?
Possibly with the terminal or Open Firmware?
Does anyone know all the Open Firmware commands or
where a list can be found so that I can explore the situation myself?
Here is some more detail of what I want to do and why.
My internal disk crashed a while ago.
(My bag slid off my shoulder and the machine hit the brick sidewalk below right on its' corner:>(
I have since been running off my little pocket-size fire-wire disk.
Today the internal disk finally really bit the dust and the bearings are making quite a noise.
(If I tip the PB while it is running the noise turns into a whine of varying pitch and loudness.
It sounds like my poor PB is crying in pain. LOL)
I want to get the internal disk to spin down until I can afford a new one and I have the time to replace it.
Any ideas?
I know I could open up the case and pull the plug on it,
but maybe there is something better and easier.
Can anyone guide me in any possible terminal commands to eject it or
give some insight into firmware commands that may help?
I know the firmware can spin the disk down. - It does so for power management.
Also, one time when I booted, the disk gave the boot process such a bad error that
the boot process asked me what to do. I told it to eject the disk - then the disk spun down
and the machine booted normally off the FW disk.
So, maybe there is an Open Firmware command I could use to permanently shut the thing off.
I cannot use the Disk Utility to unmount or eject it.
In Disk Utility, sometimes the disk is already unmounted and grayed out.
So therefor the unmount and eject commands are also greyed out.
At other times the disk does not even show up in Disk Utility.
Thanks, Bob

Thanks for the fast response.
Although your suggestion did not do the trick, it jogged my old mind into
finding a solution that does work. Or seems to work for right now.
The 'drutil' is a command for CD-R/RW media, so it could not see or act on my internal hard drive.
Your suggestion to use a disk utility command sent me off to find a command for other devices and
I remembered the 'diskutil' command.
I did a 'diskutil list' and after a good wait for the failed disk to allow completion,
I was given a list that showed what device the internal disk was (/dev/disk2).
I then did a 'diskutil eject /dev/disk2' and after a similar wait, the disk was ejected and it spun down.
It was a pleasant surprise since the drive is not ejectable and since the OsX Disk Utility could not eject it.
There are things (running the disk utility) that do seem to wake up the disk occasionally,
but all I have to do is issue the command again.
Thanks
p.s. Perhaps I was not clear in my original question that
I wanted to spin down my internal ide hard disk - sorry if that was a confusion.
p.p.s. It is also very interesting that I called Apple support and
they could not give me this simple solution.

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x

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You wrote: "I always get the error message that the volume could not be unmounted"This implies that you have either:
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b. An application or background process running that was either launched from that disk or is using a file on that disk.
c. A Startup Item or Login Item is either being launched from that disk or using a file on that disk, akin to points (a) and (b). See my "Troubleshooting Startup and Login Items" FAQ.
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Dr. Smoke
Author: Troubleshooting Mac® OS X
Note: The information provided in the link(s) above is freely available. However, because I own The X Lab™, a commercial Web site to which some of these links point, the Apple Discussions Terms of Use require I include the following disclosure statement with this post:
I may receive some form of compensation, financial or otherwise, from my recommendation or link.

Can I spin down my internal disk? Open Firmware or terminal commands?

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