mounted external Hard Drive is not spinning

[DanMa]

Hello together,

i have a external Hard Drive which i want to sent in spin down after 20 minutes.
I do this via hdparm and this is working perfectly if the drive is not mounted.

I can execute it manually as well:

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sudo hdparm -y /dev/disk/by-uuid/f702eda2-2ebe-4aa6-bad8-da80e5f2b355
/dev/disk/by-uuid/f702eda2-2ebe-4aa6-bad8-da80e5f2b355:
 issuing standby command

but then directly after (if the drive is mounted):

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sudo hdparm -C /dev/disk/by-uuid/f702eda2-2ebe-4aa6-bad8-da80e5f2b355

/dev/disk/by-uuid/f702eda2-2ebe-4aa6-bad8-da80e5f2b355:
 drive state is:  active/idle

How could i get it working that my system will not try to hold the hard drive active while its still mounted.

Here is an output which checks what is actually trying to access the ext hard drive:

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sudo fuser -mv /dev/disk/by-uuid/f702eda2-2ebe-4aa6-bad8-da80e5f2b355
                     BEN.        PID ZUGR.  BEFEHL
/dev/sdb:            root     kernel mount /mnt/ext-hdd

Greetings

Daniel

[default_user8]

Daniel,
You are using the wrong option, -y forces the drive into a low power state, try using -S which tells the drive to spin down after a specified amount of time of inactivity. If you were to use -Y option your drive would work as your expecting it to act, but the result is an immediate spindown. I use this for my mirror drive on my home NAS and it works like a charm.
The command you want would look like this:

sudo hdparm -S 240 /dev/disk/by-uuid/f702eda2-2ebe-4aa6-bad8-da80e5f2b355

Here is the description of the option:
-S Put the drive into idle (low-power) mode, and also set the
standby (spindown) timeout for the drive. This timeout value
is used by the drive to determine how long to wait (with no
disk activity) before turning off the spindle motor to save
power. Under such circumstances, the drive may take as long
as 30 seconds to respond to a subsequent disk access, though
most drives are much quicker. The encoding of the timeout
value is somewhat peculiar. A value of zero means "timeouts
are disabled": the device will not automatically enter standby
mode. Values from 1 to 240 specify multiples of 5 seconds,
yielding timeouts from 5 seconds to 20 minutes. Values from
241 to 251 specify from 1 to 11 units of 30 minutes, yielding
timeouts from 30 minutes to 5.5 hours. A value of 252
signifies a timeout of 21 minutes. A value of 253 sets a
vendor-defined timeout period between 8 and 12 hours, and the
value 254 is reserved. 255 is interpreted as 21 minutes plus
15 seconds. Note that some older drives may have very
different interpretations of these values.

and the page where i found it is here:
http://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man8/hdparm.8.html

[DanMa]

Hello default_user8,

thanks, but this is not my issue.

My issue is that my external hard drive goes not in spin down while its mounted, or better said it tries to go in spin down (you can hear it) but it wakes up directly.

If i unmount the drive its working.

So also with your command

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sudo hdparm -S 240 /dev/disk/by-uuid/f702eda2-2ebe-4aa6-bad8-da80e5f2b355

Is it going to sleep for 1 second and then waking up directly.

The only process which is trying to access is the mount process:

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fuser -mv /dev/disk/by-uuid/f702eda2-2ebe-4aa6-bad8-da80e5f2b355
                     BEN.        PID ZUGR.  BEFEHL
/dev/sda:            root     kernel mount /mnt/ext-hdd

Greetings
Daniel

[swampdog]

There needs to be some enforcement of standards in the usb/external area of computing.

I have..

• 3 esata caddies.
  6 usb caddies.
  4 unpowered usb/sata adapters.

..where one of the above is a dual usb/esata caddy.

Two of the esata caddies work (on PC) as designed. The dual usb3/esata caddy does not work with esata (on PC). Two of the six usb caddies are usb2 and never power down (PC or Pi, mounted or not). Three of the six usb caddies are usb3 and do nothing but power down (mounted or not) - usually so quickly it isn't practical to use one on a pi (for booting off of). Of the unpowered usb/sata adapters, at least one works flawlessly on PC but not on a pi, one caused a kernel panic (even with no ssd plugged in) on a pi (not about to plug that into my PC) and I just can't be bothered to test the other two unpowered ones on my PC at this time.

Most of them purport to be made by the same few manufacturers. I'm sure you're aware there's a "grey" clone industry.

I've come to the conclusion the only sure way to power cycle one of these devices is to hit its power button so I'll be buying one of those HAT's with relays in. It isn't a raspberry pi problem btw, just that the rpi can solve it.

[default_user8]

Hello default_user8,

thanks, but this is not my issue.

My issue is that my external hard drive goes not in spin down while its mounted, or better said it tries to go in spin down (you can hear it) but it wakes up directly.

If i unmount the drive its working.

So also with your command

Code: Select all

sudo hdparm -S 240 /dev/disk/by-uuid/f702eda2-2ebe-4aa6-bad8-da80e5f2b355

Is it going to sleep for 1 second and then waking up directly.

The only process which is trying to access is the mount process:

Code: Select all

fuser -mv /dev/disk/by-uuid/f702eda2-2ebe-4aa6-bad8-da80e5f2b355
                     BEN.        PID ZUGR.  BEFEHL
/dev/sda:            root     kernel mount /mnt/ext-hdd

Greetings
Daniel

While mounted if it's spinning down and immediately spinning back up something is reading from or writing to the drive, your statement that it works while unmounted supports that since while unmounted whatever is trying to read or write to the drive cannot access the drive. Your primary drive may never spin down depending on what you are using that drive for.

[DanMa]

Hello together,

@swampdog thanks for you conclusion. But my external hard drive has the ability to go in spin down.

@default_user8 thanks for your explanation, thats the reason why iam using

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fuser -mv /mountpoint

which shows me what is trying to get access to the external hard drive. The only thing is what i can see, is the mount point itself. I already tried to kill every access with

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fuser -kim /mountpoint

To be sure that really nothing else is on my raspberry which could try to get access to the external hard drive, i installed the raspberry pi completly new.
But same situation.

Could it be the way how i mount it as the reason why the mountpoint tries to hold it everytime?
I mount it so

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mount /dev/sda /mnt/ext-hdd

I had to format my external hard drive from NTFS to extfat4, since this time iam facing this issue.

Greetings

Daniel

[epoch1970]

You should not spin down a mounted file system. The OS or file system driver might want to access it, not only applications.
If you can unmount, then the drive should spin down (on its own usually) and will not spin up until you remount.

Use an automounter to automate mount/dismount if needed.

[DanMa]

@epoch1970 its normally not needed that i have to umount it first.

I found an article how i can prepare everything to let my ext hdd go in spindown.
https://www.gargi.org/index.php?title=Z ... d_Spindown

After this, everything works fine.

Hope this helps also someone else.

[epoch1970]

@epoch1970 its normally not needed that i have to umount it first.

Yes it is. A mounted file system is available to the system. Same as removing a mounted USB key, trying to spin down a mounted drive is a bad idea.
Your link proposes removing journaling from ext4. That is hardly a “normal” setup.

[torak666]

Hi, me on kodi i have the exactly opposite of you want, when i stop using my external hard drive (SSD on usb) connected to my pi4 on Kodi through my other PI3, after few times the access of my hard drive is not responding, i don't know if my hard drive is in sleep mode or in a low power consumption mode. The only way i find for now to access again my hardrive is to reboot my pi4.

But using tvheahend server on pi4 for recording on this same hard drive and read the video on tvheadend client on pi3 is ok to read the video, there is no hard drive not responding behavior.