Adam Bower wrote:

Are you using ext3 or reiserfs or XFS?

Sorry - I've half-jobbed! I should have said it's a Slackware 8.1 system using ext2 and kernel 2.4.18. raph@panache.demon.co.uk wrote:

sync runs every 30 secs to flush the disk buffers.

This sounds a bit fundamental. Does this mean that, in general, Linux users never allow their HDDs to sleep then? Gerald.