Comment 421 for bug 59695

Dan,

does disabling CD drive polling help on your machine?

Do you see any improvement from
sudo hal-disable-polling --device /dev/cdrom ?

(Side effect: does not open Nautilus window for a CD when inserted, turn it back on by deleting the created file in /etc/hal/fdi/information/prefrences.fdi )

Make sure that you compare your system while no applications are running. On my system, the HD kept quiet once the heads were parked; only disc access lead to new parking and click.

This is, by the way, a hint that powertop gave me. Maybe HAL or a bug in HAL is waking up the HD s often.