On 7/1/19 1:23 PM, Sébastien Béhuret wrote:
> For USB or FireWere disks, APM & spindown_time options are ignored,
> other options are applied, force_spindown_time will be applied too.
> There is bug, https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/515023
> explaining why USB and FireWire drives are ignored, however the
> situation might have improved since then.
>
>
> I was unaware of this bug and never experienced this issue with
> external USB drives. I do remember external USB drives going into
> standby mode shortly after backup completion, but this does not
> occur anymore in debian buster/testing. The drives in question do
> not support APM so it makes sense given that -S36 is no longer
> applied in this case.
>
>
> Correction: The external USB drives that used to go into standby mode
> were not getting any hdparm settings (not event -S36) as they were not
> used on battery mode and spindown feature is disabled by default for USB
> drives in recent hdparm versions. This must have been an internal
> feature from WD as documented here:
> https://support-en.wd.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/16047
>
> The fact that automatic spindown does not work anymore for these drives
> in buster/testing may indicate that there is some form of system noise
> (but somehow this noise would not be sufficient to wake up the drives
> after hdparm -y) or that something else is actively disabling automatic
> spindown.
Hi Sébastien,
I still have no solution for hdparm, but as workaround one can try
hd-idle which is now available via buster-backports or testing.
Best regards,
Alex
