Issuing IDE standby command to shutdown disk before poweroff or reboot

Hi all,

From some time ago, I've noticed that when rebooting or powering off my laptop, its HDD emits an audible sound like a "clonk". It's the same sound when powering off incorrectly (i.e., after a hang or something like that). I'm using 2.6.8.1 on athlon xp.

My worries come when I read the specs of the hdd vendor (it's an Hitachi 80GN family drive):

"The product supports a minimum of 300,000 normal load/unloads. The drive supports a minimum of 20,000 emergency unloads."

The spec states that the emergency unload is caused when the power is cut off for the HDD without previously issuing any of the following IDE commands: (hard reset, standby, standby immediate, sleep), and it causes mechanical stress to heads. I'm not sure if the Linux kernel currently is ussing any of this commands, but I guess no, as I said before.

I think that this issue is solved when halting, as it is possible to use the -h parameter in "halt" command, but this is not possible when rebooting or suspending (with Software Suspend 2 patch). I'm not sure if the drive is doing emergency unloads when shutting down properly the kernel, and even knowing that 20.000 unloads is a good number of unloads, maybe it could be better for the drive to unload the proper way.

Any idea, confirmation, etc. about this?

Regards,

--
Alfonso