Life without names.

As a temporary fix I edited /etc/hdparm.conf and added:

/dev/sda {
apm = 255
spindown_time = 0
}

Afterwards I installed the hdparm init script by doing ’sudo update-rc.d hdparm defaults’ to make the changes consistent over reboots.

This is the same as running the following commands:
hdparm -B255 /dev/sda
hdparm -S0 /dev/sda

This will turn off Advanced Power Management on the drive and it will disable the standby (spindown) timeout, so the drive will never be spun down and up again.