hdparm is a command line program for Linux to set and view ATA hard disk drive hardware parameters and test performance.

[4] Changing hardware parameters from suboptimal conservative defaults to their optimal settings can improve performance greatly.

There is, however, no reliable method for determining the optimal settings for a given controller-drive combination, except careful trial and error.

Current web browsers like Chrome write regularly small chunks when browsing in order not to lose any important data when the application crashes.

However, this lets the disk spin very often as the drive repeatedly needs to unleash and then park its heads.