Re: [gentoo-user] Winchester Digital HD: Advanced Format

[Mark Knecht <markknecht@gmail.com>]

On Sun, Apr 18, 2010 at 3:19 PM, pk <peterk2@coolmail.se> wrote:
> On 2010-04-18 19:43, Mark Knecht wrote:
>
>>> suspicion is that Linux is doing something that wakes the drive up
>>> once every two minutes and then lets the drive go back to sleep. That
>
> Sounds a bit like:
> http://lwn.net/Articles/257426/
>
> Although it may be different in your case...
>
> Best regards
>
> Peter K

Yeah, does sound very similar. A few others have mentioned this in the
past but I've not yet discovered what Gentoo or specifically my kernel
config might have done to set it off.

gandalf linux # date && smartctl -A /dev/sda | grep Load_Cycle_Count
Sun Apr 18 16:08:16 PDT 2010
193 Load_Cycle_Count        0x0032   187   187   000    Old_age
Always       -       41929
gandalf linux #

I'd experiment with the hdparm command but it doesn't work. Maybe
there's somethign else I need to do first or something:

gandalf linux # hdparm -B 254 /dev/sda

/dev/sda:
 setting Advanced Power Management level to 0xfe (254)
 HDIO_DRIVE_CMD failed: Input/output error
 HDIO_DRIVE_CMD(identify) failed: Input/output error
gandalf linux #

hdparm does work though:

gandalf linux # hdparm -tT /dev/sda

/dev/sda:
 Timing cached reads:   11552 MB in  2.00 seconds = 5779.10 MB/sec
 Timing buffered disk reads:  314 MB in  3.00 seconds = 104.50 MB/sec
gandalf linux #

Thanks,
Mark