Re: [gentoo-user] cryptsetup close and device in use when it is not

[Frank Steinmetzger <Warp_7@gmx.de>]

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Am Sun, Jul 25, 2021 at 06:10:19PM -0500 schrieb Dale:

> That's interesting.  I have two different drives, can't recall but may
> be the same brand.

The actual drive in my enclusure is a Seagate, BTW.

> I've tried external drives connected by USB before and hated them.  Slow
> when they do work and buggy at that.

Theoretically, HDDs are not able to saturate USB 3. And from my observation,
I do get their maximum performance – my 2.5″ 1 TB WD delivers about 80-90 MB/s
read speed and said Intenso/Seagate 3.5″ gives me up to around 140 MB/s tops.
I used dstat to gather those numbers.

> I've had more drives go bad when using USB enclosures than I've ever had
> on IDE or (e)SATA.

Interesting, I can’t really confirm such a correlation from the drives I
have lying around. And I don’t see how USB can cause damage to a drive.
Except for physical impacts owing to the fact that USB drives are easily
moved around.

> I've had two drives fail after years of service that were IDE or SATA.  I
> have three drives that are bricks and all of them were in USB enclosures
> and far young to die.

Perhaps they became too hot during operation. Enclosures don’t usually
account for thermals. Didn’t you mention you lived in a hot area?

> I paid more for eSATA external enclosures and have had no
> problems with drives going dead yet.  All of them have far surpassed the
> drives in the USB enclosures.

Hm... bad (in the sense of cheap) USB controllers on the mobo or the
enclosures? Or bad USB cables? What kind of HDD death are we talking about?
Certainly not bad sectors, right?

> Bad thing is, I don't use anything Microsoft here.  Can a drive's
> firmware be updated on Linux?

Well, that seagate update ISO didn’t work with USB and I think all my CDRW
are now serving as saucers for cups. So I downloaded the EXE and ran it on
my gaming Windows. It actually set up a temporary boot of a tiny linux which
tried the firmware update. Infortunately it didn’t detect the drive and the
text went by too fast. Might give it another try some other time.

> I think my drives are either Seagate or WD.  I tend to stick with those
> two, unless it is a really awesome deal.

Yea. First the SMR fiasco became public and then there was some other PR
stunt they did that I can’t remember right now, and I said “I can’t buy WD
anymore”. But there is no real alternative these days. And CMR drives are
becoming ever rarer, especially in the 2.5″ realm. Except for one single
seagate model, there isn’t even a bare SATA drive above 2 TB available on
the market! Everything above that size is external USB stuff. And those
disks don’t come with standard SATA connectors anymore, but have the USB
socket soldered onto their PCB.

> I've never updated the firmware on a drive before.

Me neither. I think I updated an SSD once.

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