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From: James H. Markowitz on 9 Feb 2010 21:03
I have a number of USB hard drives connected to a Linux PC. They
all work fine, but they have an annoyance in common: When they have been
accessed for a while (minutes; I am not sure how many) the next time I
try to access them several seconds elapse before they respond. It's as
though they stopped spinning when not accessed for a while.

Is there a way around this? That is, I'd like for my drives to be
equally responsive, no matter whether they have been accessed one minute
or one day ago. The drives themselves are from different manufacturers so
I wonder it is something to do with USB configuration, rather than a
vendor feature?

From: J G Miller on 9 Feb 2010 21:19
On Wed, 10 Feb 2010 02:03:49 +0000, James H. Markowitz asked:

> Is there a way around this?

Using the command "man hdparm" to get the details --

NAME
hdparm - get/set SATA/IDE device parameters

SYNOPSIS
hdparm [ flags ] [device] ..


-B Query/set Advanced Power Management feature, if the
drive supports it. A low value means aggressive power
management and a high value means better performance.
Possible settings range from values 1 through 127 (which
permit spin-down), and values 128 through 254 (which do
not permit spin-down). The highest degree of power
management is attained with a setting of 1, and the
highest I/O performance with a setting of 254. A value of
255 tells hdparm to disable Advanced Power Management
altogether on the drive (not all drives support
disabling it, but most do).
From: Aragorn on 9 Feb 2010 21:19
On Wednesday 10 February 2010 03:03 in comp.os.linux.misc, somebody
identifying as James H. Markowitz wrote...

> I have a number of USB hard drives connected to a Linux PC. They
> all work fine, but they have an annoyance in common: When they have
> been accessed for a while (minutes; I am not sure how many) the next
> time I try to access them several seconds elapse before they respond.
> It's as though they stopped spinning when not accessed for a while.

That is possible. Can you hear them spinning up when accessing them
after this period of inactivity? (It would be a faint sound rapidly
climbing in pitch.)

> Is there a way around this? That is, I'd like for my drives to be
> equally responsive, no matter whether they have been accessed one
> minute or one day ago. The drives themselves are from different
> manufacturers so I wonder it is something to do with USB
> configuration, rather than a vendor feature?

It could be either, but I'm not really qualified to give you any advice
on that. The kernel does contain some routines to put certain USB
devices in "ACPI sleep state", but for all I know that could simply be
some code that tells the kernel not to poll the devices after a given
time-out until some process is trying to access them again. So I don't
really know whether that actually sends a "spin down" command to USB
storage devices. Given the diversity of USB storage devices, I don't
think that this would be the case, unless perhaps the device itself
draws power from the USB connector itself, as opposed to from a
separate power supply.

On the other hand, the "sleep" feature could also be built into the
device itself. For instance, I have an Iomega REV drive, which also
connects via USB, and after a given time-out, the drive also spins down
automatically. This is usually done because such devices are not
really intended for 24/7 uptimes - especially not removables like the
REV, or my old Jaz disks, which did the same (and which were used with
an internal SCSI Jaz drive).

--
*Aragorn*
(registered GNU/Linux user #223157)
From: Todd on 11 Feb 2010 14:22
On 02/09/2010 06:03 PM, James H. Markowitz wrote:
> I have a number of USB hard drives connected to a Linux PC. They
> all work fine, but they have an annoyance in common: When they have been
> accessed for a while (minutes; I am not sure how many) the next time I
> try to access them several seconds elapse before they respond. It's as
> though they stopped spinning when not accessed for a while.
>
> Is there a way around this? That is, I'd like for my drives to be
> equally responsive, no matter whether they have been accessed one minute
> or one day ago. The drives themselves are from different manufacturers so
> I wonder it is something to do with USB configuration, rather than a
> vendor feature?
>

Hi James,

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=469290

You are not alone. The only way I found to get
around it was to reboot. Changing "elevators"
did not work either.

I could duplicate my problem by starting and then
interrupting a "dump" backup.

Mine "seemed" to get better after I upgraded from
CentOS 5.3 to 5.4. Time will tell.

-T
From: David W. Hodgins on 11 Feb 2010 15:24
On Thu, 11 Feb 2010 14:22:20 -0500, Todd <todd(a)invalid.com> wrote:

> On 02/09/2010 06:03 PM, James H. Markowitz wrote:
>> I have a number of USB hard drives connected to a Linux PC. They
>> all work fine, but they have an annoyance in common: When they have been
>> accessed for a while (minutes; I am not sure how many) the next time I
>> try to access them several seconds elapse before they respond. It's as
>> though they stopped spinning when not accessed for a while.

> https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=469290
> You are not alone. The only way I found to get
> around it was to reboot. Changing "elevators"
> did not work either.

See if
echo "-1" >/sys/module/usbcore/parameters/autosuspend
helps fix this.

May cause a shorter battery usage time, for laptops.

Regards, Dave Hodgins

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