[arch-general] Western Digital external drives
Hallo, I'm aware that there's an Arch Wiki about WD drives. However, I need to know if something is bad with Linux or a brand new WD drive. In the German WD forms I got a reply, with the claim, that once a WD Elements is spin down, it will park, _not_ spin up again, if there's no access. For my updated Arch Linux, 64-bit with current kernel and current kernel-rt, running current Xfce 4 the drive does spin down and up again and again even when _no_ partition is mounted, I'm running a Xfce 4 session without an application launched, while I don't use the computer. So with completely no access by me, - Arch Linux _does_ access the drive, even if no partition is mounted - or I got a brand new drive that's broken and should make use of the warranty How can I find out, if there's something fishy with my Arch Linux or if the drive is broken? Any ideas? Regards, Ralf
Hi Ralf, On 14 March 2013 23:20, Ralf Mardorf <ralf.mardorf@alice-dsl.net> wrote:
I'm aware that there's an Arch Wiki about WD drives. However, I need to know if something is bad with Linux or a brand new WD drive.
In the German WD forms I got a reply, with the claim, that once a WD Elements is spin down, it will park, _not_ spin up again, if there's no access.
That's usual for most drives, it would surprise me if any modern consumer WD drive didn't do this.
For my updated Arch Linux, 64-bit with current kernel and current kernel-rt, running current Xfce 4 the drive does spin down and up again and again even when _no_ partition is mounted, I'm running a Xfce 4 session without an application launched, while I don't use the computer. So with completely no access by me,
- Arch Linux _does_ access the drive, even if no partition is mounted - or I got a brand new drive that's broken and should make use of the warranty
It's probably neither of these things, more than likely there is some program which spins up your drives periodically to try and get information about them. Have you tested in another environment (the installer, perhaps)? My first guess would be something to do with Xfce. Best, Chris
On Fri, 2013-03-15 at 05:35 +0800, Chris Down wrote:
It's probably neither of these things, more than likely there is some program which spins up your drives periodically to try and get information about them.
Have you tested in another environment (the installer, perhaps)? My first guess would be something to do with Xfce.
Hi Chris, yes, if I stay in the BIOS configuration the drive spins down and keeps sleeping. I tested it with a very old Suse, GNOME 2 and with Ubuntu Quantal, Xfce 4, there I get the same issue as for Arch, it spins down and up and down and up ... When I run AVLinux with Xfce it never spins down, the LED indicates that there is access every few seconds. I'm willing to disable energy saving or if this shouldn't work to touch the drive that often by a script, that it always keeps awake, but it would be nice to use the energy saving mode, assumed it wood stay sleeping. [root@archlinux rocketmouse]# smartctl -i /dev/sdc smartctl 6.0 2012-10-10 r3643 [x86_64-linux-3.7.10-1-ARCH] (local build) Copyright (C) 2002-12, Bruce Allen, Christian Franke, www.smartmontools.org === START OF INFORMATION SECTION === Device Model: WDC WD20EZRX-00DC0B0 Serial Number: WD-WMC300753067 LU WWN Device Id: 5 0014ee 65863b194 Firmware Version: 80.00A80 User Capacity: 2,000,398,934,016 bytes [2.00 TB] Sector Sizes: 512 bytes logical, 4096 bytes physical Device is: Not in smartctl database [for details use: -P showall] ATA Version is: ACS-2 (minor revision not indicated) SATA Version is: SATA 3.0, 6.0 Gb/s (current: 1.5 Gb/s) Local Time is: Thu Mar 14 22:53:28 2013 CET SMART support is: Available - device has SMART capability. SMART support is: Enabled If I should be able to disable it, it anyway would be good to find the reason, to file a bug report. Regards, Ralf
On 15 March 2013 05:56, Ralf Mardorf <ralf.mardorf@alice-dsl.net> wrote:
yes, if I stay in the BIOS configuration the drive spins down and keeps sleeping.
I'm more curious about the installer (or a bare bones Arch install) than sitting in the BIOS. That makes it easier to differentiate Xfce problems from problems in base packages or the kernel itself.
I tested it with a very old Suse, GNOME 2 and with Ubuntu Quantal, Xfce 4, there I get the same issue as for Arch, it spins down and up and down and up ...
Both of these environments have a lot of daemons/etc running that may wish to periodically probe drives in a way that causes it to spin up for whatever reason. Best, Chris
On Thu, Mar 14, 2013 at 11:57 PM, Chris Down <chris@chrisdown.name> wrote:
On 15 March 2013 05:56, Ralf Mardorf <ralf.mardorf@alice-dsl.net> wrote:
yes, if I stay in the BIOS configuration the drive spins down and keeps sleeping.
I'm more curious about the installer (or a bare bones Arch install) than sitting in the BIOS. That makes it easier to differentiate Xfce problems from problems in base packages or the kernel itself.
I tested it with a very old Suse, GNOME 2 and with Ubuntu Quantal, Xfce 4, there I get the same issue as for Arch, it spins down and up and down and up ...
Both of these environments have a lot of daemons/etc running that may wish to periodically probe drives in a way that causes it to spin up for whatever reason.
Best,
Chris
You can also try to add to the kernel boot command the parameter `break=premount`. It will break very early in the booting process, so you can check if it is the kernel itself who probes the disk. Rodrigo.
participants (3)
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Chris Down
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Ralf Mardorf
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Rodrigo Rivas