With an usb harddrive attached at startup and detected as /dev/sdc, /etc/init.d/hdparm does not recognize to set it with $sdc_args. hdparm is part of the "boot" runlevel. When the system is up, a restart of the hdparm script is setting up the usb device. I would guess a 'need' or 'after' dependency for something would solve this. Reproducible: Always
set rc_need in your /etc/conf.d/hdparm for your site-specific dependencies. i'm guessing most people do not use usb attached hard drives so putting this depend in the main init.d would negatively impact them.