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List:       smartmontools-support
Subject:    [smartmontools-support] USB SAT and drive spin-down time-outs
From:       Tim Small <tim () buttersideup ! com>
Date:       2009-08-10 19:01:30
Message-ID: 4A806E8A.6070501 () buttersideup ! com
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Hello,

Off topic, I suppose, but I have two reasons for trying to get a
solution together which allows me to use USB with SAT - I'm trying to
use a series of external USB drives as a backup solution.  I'd like
these drives to:

1. Support SMART monitoring (tick with the Oxford Semiconductor based
adaptor).

2. Spin down when not in use to save power and drive wear (it only needs
to be on for about 20 minutes per day whilst the backups are occuring,
and should ideally be spun down at other times, to avoid damage whilst
it is handled).

hdparm also supports SAT, so I used its '-S' option to set the spin-down
time to 30 seconds, this seems to work nicely with the Oxford
Semiconductor OXUF934SSA-LQAG ...  except that the drive spins itself up
again within a minute - it repeatedly does this, so I'd guess that it's
the USB<->SATA adaptor which is periodically issuing some command or
other to the drive, and forcing it to come out of its low power state.

Any ideas if other manufacturer's USB <-> S|PATA adaptors do this as
well, or should I just give up and buy a PCIe <-> eSATA card instead?

Cheers,

Tim.

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