From: linux-audio-user-bounces@lists.linuxaudio.org on behalf of John Murphy
> It spins up even if no partition is mounted!?

Yes.

> Does it spin down and up again if you stay in your BIOS configuration,
> or Grub prompt?

Thank you John :) that's a very good idea. I'll test it right now.

FWIW for

spinymouse@avlinux:~$ uname -a
Linux avlinux 3.0.23-avl-7-pae #28 SMP PREEMPT Thu Mar 1 19:14:14 EST 2012 i686 GNU/Linux
spinymouse@avlinux:~$ cat /etc/issue
Debian GNU/Linux 6.0 \n \l

Xfce does auto-mount the partitions and the WD never spins down, the LED shows access every few seconds, even with nothing else but Xfce and the screensaver running. Suse 11.2, Ubuntu Quantal and Arch Linux (all 64-bit) also make the WD spin down and up when the partitions are mounted.

*restart*