Re: SATA disc spindown

[Ramon Hofer <ramonhofer@bluewin.ch>]

On Fri, 25 Nov 2011 14:58:33 +0100, Lou wrote:

> On -10.01.-28163 20:59, Ramon Hofer wrote:
> 
>> Btw: As you didn't write anything else hdparm should have no problem
>> spinning down sata drives?
>>
>> Do you know if I can check the hdparm setting somewhere? Like hdparm -C
>> to show me the spindown setting?
> 
> It depends on the drive - there is hdparm -I /dev/<device> that offers a
> capability and a command feature section. From the looks at my output
> (where hdparm -S <int> works alright) there is this option:
> 
>             *    Power Management feature set
> 
> Maybe this is mandatory for hdparm to work with your hardware, I'm not
> sure.

When I set hdparm -S it tells me it sets the option and what the number 
means.
hdparm -I says the Power Management feature is set (btw it is still set 
when I set hdparm -S 0).
So far so good.

But even when I unmount the drive it doesn't spin down, at least there's 
nothing in the syslog and hdparm -C says it's still active.

I can unmount the disc, set it to sleep with -Y and when I mount it again 
syslog says ata2.00: waking up from sleep

Nov 25 16:00:01 media-server kernel: [ 1055.621588] ata2.00: exception 
Emask 0x0 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x0 action 0x6
Nov 25 16:00:01 media-server kernel: [ 1055.621664] ata2.00: waking up 
from sleep
Nov 25 16:00:01 media-server kernel: [ 1055.621738] ata2.00: hard 
resetting link
Nov 25 16:00:01 media-server kernel: [ 1055.938034] ata2.01: hard 
resetting link
Nov 25 16:00:02 media-server kernel: [ 1056.414344] ata2.00: SATA link up 
3.0 Gbps (SStatus 123 SControl 300)
Nov 25 16:00:02 media-server kernel: [ 1056.414360] ata2.01: SATA link up 
3.0 Gbps (SStatus 123 SControl 300)
Nov 25 16:00:02 media-server kernel: [ 1056.438445] ata2.00: configured 
for UDMA/133
Nov 25 16:00:02 media-server kernel: [ 1056.446699] ata2.01: configured 
for UDMA/133
Nov 25 16:00:02 media-server kernel: [ 1056.446711] ata2: EH complete

Seems ok. But nothing is syslogged when I mount it after setting 
hdparm -S 1.

Any other ideas?


Maybe this is important:
I use Squeeze, 2.6.32-5-amd64, hdparm v9.32, the drive sdc is a WDC 
WD20EARS-00MVWB0 and the mainboard an ASUS P7P55D.

There are four SAMSUNG HD154UI discs in a mdadm raid5 array but I think 
they more complicated to setup because of mdadm. The idea was to send 
them to sleep too but because of mdadm it seems to be a better idea to 
look at them later...