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#1
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External Hard Drive wont shut off
Just set up a External HD for backup purposes. I was hoping that there
would be a way to allow it to shut off at the same time as the internal one does. I installed a Seagate 250GB Sata HD in a Venus DS3 Sata/USB E-Sata enclosure. http://www.newegg.com/product/produc...82E16817145660 If i look in the device manager (running XP Home) i see 4 entires for USB Root Hub, one entry for USB Mass Storage Device and then up in the Disk drive category it shows USB Hard drive. The USB HD and USB Mass storage device only show Power settings under the details tab and there are no options. The USB Hub entries show a "Power Management" tab and there are a few options to change there. They all appear to be set correctly. When i set the power settings to shut off HD after x minutes only the internal shuts off. If i choose to Standby same deal only the internal spins down. I just tried installing the latest drivers from the enclosure manufacturers website and still no go. Am i out of luck with this set up? Seems a shame to be saving images and backups to this external backup when the HD is running all the time. Any ideas or alternative enclosures are appreciated. |
#2
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External Hard Drive wont shut off
LOTL wrote:
.... Any ideas or alternative enclosures are appreciated. One obvious solution would be to use an external SATA (not USB - SATA) enclosure; you could even cobble up an external PATA enclosure if you cut a slot to pass the cables through (this is not strictly kosher, nor are PATA cables longer than 18", but both have worked OK for me). Another option would be to buy an inexpensive (as little as $7 for a PATA version at geeks.com, though for a single item shipping would double that and the SATA versions seem to be more expensive for no obvious reason) 3.5" disk tray and carrier and mount them in an available 5.25" bay to create a removable internal installation. It sounds as if the disk spin-down facilities don't support disks that aren't directly connected (rather than via USB) - though I'd kind of expect XP to extend them to SCSI drives, and that might include drives connected through an add-on PCI card (which since that's how common add-on ATA cards present themselves to the system might work for them as well). - bill |
#3
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External Hard Drive wont shut off
Thanks Bill,
The enclosure is USB/E-Sata and came with a SATA cable to connect directly to the motherboard. The computer i set this backup on didnt have SATA connections. I chose the enclosure so i could use a SATA hard drive and not for the E-Sata connectivity (which reportedly is somewhat buggy) The person who i did this for also wanted the capability of using this with his laptop on occasion and needed to have the USB connectivity. Im really surprised that aside from some of the prepackaged external hard drives, that the auto spindown feature can not be made to work via the drivers or firmware on these external enclosures. I wanted a DIY solution to take advantage of Seagates 5 year warranty on their hard drives and now i think it may have been the wrong decision if it has to stay running all the time. The 2 prepackaged external HD's i looked at from Seagate and Western Digital both only came with 1 year warranties. The enclosure in question does have a On/Off rocker switch, but my friend already said he wont bother to turn it on and off. The imaging software hes using has the ability to issue pre and post scripts. Im looking into something where i can issue a post command to maybe disable the external HD, but i suspect with power still applied the HD is still going to spin. Ive also know there are some serial (maybe USB) relay devices that i could disconnect power to the external enclosure, but now we are talking overkill and making the whole thing more complicated than it should be. On Jan 29, 3:52 am, Bill Todd wrote: LOTL wrote:... Any ideas or alternative enclosures are appreciated.One obvious solution would be to use an external SATA (not USB - SATA) enclosure; you could even cobble up an external PATA enclosure if you cut a slot to pass the cables through (this is not strictly kosher, nor are PATA cables longer than 18", but both have worked OK for me). Another option would be to buy an inexpensive (as little as $7 for a PATA version at geeks.com, though for a single item shipping would double that and the SATA versions seem to be more expensive for no obvious reason) 3.5" disk tray and carrier and mount them in an available 5.25" bay to create a removable internal installation. It sounds as if the disk spin-down facilities don't support disks that aren't directly connected (rather than via USB) - though I'd kind of expect XP to extend them to SCSI drives, and that might include drives connected through an add-on PCI card (which since that's how common add-on ATA cards present themselves to the system might work for them as well). - bill |
#4
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External Hard Drive wont shut off
I just tried installing the latest drivers from the enclosure
manufacturers website and still no go. Am i out of luck with this set up? Yes. The USB-ATA bridge chip in the enclosure does not support the necessary commands (START STOP UNIT namely). Sorry. Seems a shame to be saving images and backups to this external backup when the HD is running all the time. Why shame? Start/stop of the disk drive increases wear. I would never even enable this feature on any desktop PC (battery-powered laptops is another song). Also,I would never bother myself looking for a new enclosure just due to this. After all, you can eject the enclosure by means of Windows when it is not necessary and then switch it off completely by hand. -- Maxim Shatskih, Windows DDK MVP StorageCraft Corporation http://www.storagecraft.com |
#5
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External Hard Drive wont shut off
It sounds as if the disk spin-down facilities don't support disks that
aren't directly connected (rather than via USB) - though I'd kind of expect XP to extend them to SCSI drives, and that might include drives connected through an add-on PCI card Disk spindown works for SCSI disks in w2k too. Disk spindown in Windows (w2k and up) does not depend on bus, and just sends START STOP UNIT/Stop down to the storage port layer. The storage port layer honestly translates this to necessary bus protocol (to USB storage protocol, for instance) and then sends over the wire. USBSTOR storage port in Windows supports START STOP UNIT for sure, since you can eject the USB-attached CD drive via software. So, the issue is in the USB target chip in the enclosure - it cannot translate START STOP UNIT/Stop from the USB side to the proper ATA command. Not a major issue though. -- Maxim Shatskih, Windows DDK MVP StorageCraft Corporation http://www.storagecraft.com |
#6
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External Hard Drive wont shut off
Im really surprised that aside from some of the prepackaged external
hard drives, that the auto spindown feature can not be made to work via the drivers or firmware on these external enclosures. Windows supports the auto-spindown feature on any properly developed hardware, but this particular enclosure is not such. Anyway this is a very minor issue, and, for instance, I would expect the salesguy in the shop to not know at all about what enclosures he sells support this, and what do not. I wanted a DIY solution to take advantage of Seagates 5 year warranty on their hard drives and now i think it may have been the wrong decision if it has to stay running all the time. Start/stop operations increase the wear. Destkop drives are designed (and the warranty takes this into account) to be spinning 24x7, but not moving the head actuator 24x7. Enterprise drives are designed to do both 24x7. The imaging software hes using has the ability to issue pre and post scripts. Im looking into something where i can issue a post command to maybe disable the external HD If this is an enclosure issue - then no ways. -- Maxim Shatskih, Windows DDK MVP StorageCraft Corporation http://www.storagecraft.com |
#7
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External Hard Drive wont shut off
Thanks Maxim for the informative comments.
I was always under the assumption that shutting off the HD when not in use would prolong the life of it, and usually set up my systems to do this. Especially in this situation where itll only be used as backup once a week and monthly for system images. I may switch him to daily backups, but even then it'll write to the disk for less than a minute. I have to believe that having it shut down and starting once a day would be less wear and tear on the drive than having it spinning 24/7. I understand what your saying here about the starting and stopping and maybe im being overly cautious in trying to find an enclosure that accomplishes this. As i mentioned the person using this will never bother to shut it off once its hooked up. Even when he shuts down his PC, this thing will still be running along. On Jan 29, 8:58 am, "Maxim S. Shatskih" wrote: I just tried installing the latest drivers from the enclosure manufacturers website and still no go. Am i out of luck with this set up?Yes. The USB-ATA bridge chip in the enclosure does not support the necessary commands (START STOP UNIT namely). Sorry. Seems a shame to be saving images and backups to this external backup when the HD is running all the time.Why shame? Start/stop of the disk drive increases wear. I would never even enable this feature on any desktop PC (battery-powered laptops is another song). Also,I would never bother myself looking for a new enclosure just due to this. After all, you can eject the enclosure by means of Windows when it is not necessary and then switch it off completely by hand. -- Maxim Shatskih, Windows DDK MVP StorageCraft Corporation |
#8
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External Hard Drive wont shut off
I understand what your saying here about the starting and stopping
In fact, I've heard this on the very same forum from some people who looked trustworthy in my eyes :-) they said "desktop drive is designed to spin 24x7 but not to move heads 24x7". Start and stop is the hardest thing for many kind of machinery, from lightbulbs to car engines (in cold weather especially). As i mentioned the person using this will never bother to shut it off once its hooked up. Even when he shuts down his PC, this thing will still be running along. Is this a desktop PC? then why not push the power switch on the enclosure? -- Maxim Shatskih, Windows DDK MVP StorageCraft Corporation http://www.storagecraft.com |
#9
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External Hard Drive wont shut off
LOTL wrote:
Thanks Maxim for the informative comments. I was always under the assumption that shutting off the HD when not in use would prolong the life of it, and usually set up my systems to do this. Especially in this situation where itll only be used as backup once a week and monthly for system images. I may switch him to daily backups, but even then it'll write to the disk for less than a minute. I have to believe that having it shut down and starting once a day would be less wear and tear on the drive than having it spinning 24/7. Those beliefs are not unreasonable. For example, the lowest spec for start/stop lifetime that I remember seeing is 50,000 cycles (over 5 years even if you start and stop the drive every *hour*) so I have to believe that less than 2,000 start/stop cycles over a disk's nominal 5-year service life (the number you'd encounter starting and stopping it once a day) would be perfectly safe. On the other hand, desktop drive mean time between failure specs are now up around 500,000 - 600,000 hours, which means that the less than 50,000 hours that would accumulate if you left the disk spinning constantly for its 5-year service life should also be perfectly safe - though not by quite so large a margin as you'd expect the start/stop spec to provide (only about 12:1 rather than over 25:1). On the third hand, in real-world environments some people have found these MTBF rates to be significantly optimistic (though perhaps only in heavier constant use than typical desktop use, let alone the extremely light backup use that you're describing - e.g., one study involved the Internet Archive, while another involved Microsoft's TerraServer, both of which experienced rather heavy loads). My own inclination is to power down a disk that isn't likely to be used for anything approaching a day (or longer, of course), and otherwise to leave it spinning: start/stop cycles *do* add stress, but so does continuous running. And on the fourth hand, leaving a disk (especially one that's getting old) spun down for a month or more can sometimes result in the dreaded 'stiction', wherein it won't spin up (at least the people touting 'MAID' assert that this can still be a problem for contemporary disks). So the bottom line is that the main difference between leaving the disk spinning all the time and powering it up once a day (or once a week, or once a month) will likely be the power you wind up using: longevity shouldn't be affected all that much either way, unless you intend to use the disk for far longer than its nominal service life. In any event, be sure that the disk doesn't get hot. 55 degrees Celsius is often the nominal specified temperature limit, but I'm not happy seeing my drives running above 40 degrees (and there are studies that indicate that lifetimes are about halved for each 15 degree rise). A 'clean' source of power is probably important as well (some enclosures are so inexpensive that it's hard to imagine that they can guarantee this as well as a good PC power supply can, and protection against external spikes and brownouts is also a good idea). - bill |
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