USB HDD spin down

[mk01]

it very much depends on what interface is your USB enclosure providing to systems.

what is "hdparm -y DEV" telling ?

[Davem]

I'm also having problems with the spinning down of my external hard drive (500 GB, 3,5" Iomega in casing). The problem is that it won't spin down. Not after the standard 5 minutes and not on command.

$ sudo hdparm -y /dev/sda1
returns:

Terminal

/dev/sda1:
issuing standby command
SG_IO: bad/missing sense data, sb[]: 70 00 05 00 00 00 00 0a 00 00 00 00 20 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00

After some searching I found a lot more people facing the same problems and their is an alternative: HD-idle.

After installing the predefined package of Termo Termo, source of the threat

Copied the .deb file to my pi and installed by:
sudo dpkg -i hd-idle_1.04_armhf.deb

the service can be started (the standard spin down is set to 600 sec.):
sudo /etc/init.d/hd-idle start

after a test, the harddrive still doesn't spins down:
sudo hd-idle -t sda

I cannot produce any log files with:
sudo hd-idle -t sda -l /home/xbian/hd-idle.log

hd-idle is active because: sudo hd-idle -help is returning the options.

Somebody having any idea's how to spin down my external hard drive, all tips are appreciated?

[kaladont]

For WD My Passeport solution was to set this on hdd with provided sw. My it will work with other drives that have supported sw and parameter to change this.

[Davem]

Kaladont, thanks for the reply. I'm not entirely sure what you mean with "hdd with provided sw"

Do you mean connect the hard drive first to a USB switch? Because it is now directly connected to the PI (but the HDD has its own power supply).

[kaladont]

My HDD has some software for windows for making backups and so on... In windows with that WD utility you can set spin down time.
Then you connect HDD to RaspberryPI and it will work. Offcourse over USB hub 'cause raspberryPI cannot provide enough power.

Now I have bought Segate baracuda and spin down works out of the box.

[Davem]

After opening up my Iomega USB2.0 harddrive casing I found the Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 SATA HDD inside (ST3500830AS).

After playing around with the software of Seagate (Seatools and Diskwizzard) no option for changing the power management came up. Iomega has no software and there is no Seagate firmware update available.
I'm not sure if the problem is caused by the harddrive or the iomega casing but I think hdparm and hd-idle are not putting it to sleep.