USB external hard drive disconnecting

[Reid Rivenburgh]

On Feb 19, 2008 11:47 AM, Bill Davidsen <davidsen at tmr.com> wrote:
>
> Reid Rivenburgh wrote:
> > Hi Bill.  Thanks for the information.  I've done a lot of searching
> > regarding this problem and have since seen that info.  Unfortunately,
> > I have a Cavalry drive, and sdparm reports things like this:
> >
> > # sdparm --clear STANDBY -6 /dev/sdd
> >     /dev/sdd: Generic   External          1.04
> > change_mode_page: page offset failed: given response length too small,
> > offset=4 given_len=4 bd_len=0
> >
> > I assume my brand isn't known by sdparm or doesn't speak the right
> > protocol or something.  So I've had to resort to workarounds like cron
> > jobs that fiddle with the disk.
>
> Did you look at your mode page? You might be able to find info from the
> vendor, not having the drive stay online is painful. And since Staples
> and OfficeMax have them on sale regularly, they make great cheap backup
> drives.

That was my thinking, good capacity for a good price.  I haven't
looked into getting any kind of info from the vendor.

I've done a lot of fooling around with workarounds to this problem,
and it turns out that I'm currently not doing anything to keep the
drive awake.  All my attempts at cron job kludges are commented out,
and it's been working fine.  I didn't even realize it!  I've been
running some newer, updated kernels since my first report, so maybe
they have fixes for this.  The hard drive is still very warm, so it's
probably somehow being kept on all the time.  Just FYI....

Thanks,
Reid