On Thu, Jan 12, 2017 at 03:08:07PM +0100, Benny Siegert wrote: > Hi folks! > > I have an external hard drive with USB 3 connection, based on a > Promise USB-SATA bridge. (This is on NetBSD-current, amd64.) > > Unfortunately, after a few minutes of inactivity, the controller will > spin down the hard drive. Any access after that (even unmounting the > file system there) leads to the process hanging forever. There are > kernel messages mentioning IOERROR and TIMEOUT. Even rebooting will > hang. > > - Is there a way to prevent the drive from spinning down? Perhaps some > atactl command?
I use to spin down my _internal_ SATA drives with "atactl setstandby <time>". A value of 0 will disable the spin-down. But I don't think atactl works for USB/external drives. IIRC, USB drives quack like scsi. > - Once the drive has spun down, how do I get out of this state > cleanly? Turning the disk off and on again does not work. > > --Benny.
