Monday, August 20
Sleeping On The Job
I'm out of disk space (as usual), so I stopped by my local HiFi store and bought a 500GB Destern Wigital MyBook ES. 'Cause it's actually cheaper to buy that than to buy a bare drive and a cheap external case from my usual online computer store.
It looks good. It's fast. It's effectively silent. It has both USB and eSATA. And it keeps falling asleep.
That in itself is not a problem. Having an external drive spin down when not in use is probably a good idea for most people.
The problem is twofold: One, you can't tell it not to spin down. Two, whenever this happens, Windows goes nuts. I get a barrage of "Delayed Write Failed" errors, despite the fact that I've disabled write caching on that drive, and the only way I can get Windows to recognise the drive again is to turn it off and on again, which is less than ideal.
So I had to write a little script in Cygwin to access the drive every five seconds. Originally it was every minute, but that didn't actually suffice to keep the little beasty awake.
I think that part of the problem is USB support on my elderly motherboard, which dates to 2003. I've had problems with other USB drives, but never a hiccup with my Firewire external drive.
Time for a new computer.
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I'm out of disk space (as usual), so I stopped by my local HiFi store and bought a 500GB Destern Wigital MyBook ES. 'Cause it's actually cheaper to buy that than to buy a bare drive and a cheap external case from my usual online computer store.
It looks good. It's fast. It's effectively silent. It has both USB and eSATA. And it keeps falling asleep.
That in itself is not a problem. Having an external drive spin down when not in use is probably a good idea for most people.
The problem is twofold: One, you can't tell it not to spin down. Two, whenever this happens, Windows goes nuts. I get a barrage of "Delayed Write Failed" errors, despite the fact that I've disabled write caching on that drive, and the only way I can get Windows to recognise the drive again is to turn it off and on again, which is less than ideal.
So I had to write a little script in Cygwin to access the drive every five seconds. Originally it was every minute, but that didn't actually suffice to keep the little beasty awake.
I think that part of the problem is USB support on my elderly motherboard, which dates to 2003. I've had problems with other USB drives, but never a hiccup with my Firewire external drive.
Time for a new computer.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at
11:24 AM
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1
The "Delayed Write Failed" error might have something to do with dirty data cached in the host RAM and not with the drive's built-in cache.
I saw a few drives the spun down by themselves, this usually is configurable with a jumper. One can also make an (S)ATA drive to spin on idle with a command, but I doublt Windows does it. To push it through a USB bridge requires a special wrapper. command. Also, it's completely transparent, the drive would spin up upon receipt of a read-write command.
If this is something new like Vista, the OS might be trying to put the USB device to enter the suspended state. This is a feature which older Windows boxes did not support, and so tons of devices do not work when a hosts tries to suspend them. The workaround is in the registry somewhere.
Plug the drive into Linux and e-mail me about the results, maybe it's just a broken drive, or a jumper forgotten inside the unit.
I saw a few drives the spun down by themselves, this usually is configurable with a jumper. One can also make an (S)ATA drive to spin on idle with a command, but I doublt Windows does it. To push it through a USB bridge requires a special wrapper. command. Also, it's completely transparent, the drive would spin up upon receipt of a read-write command.
If this is something new like Vista, the OS might be trying to put the USB device to enter the suspended state. This is a feature which older Windows boxes did not support, and so tons of devices do not work when a hosts tries to suspend them. The workaround is in the registry somewhere.
Plug the drive into Linux and e-mail me about the results, maybe it's just a broken drive, or a jumper forgotten inside the unit.
Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at Monday, August 20 2007 02:11 PM (9imyF)
2
Oh BTW. Minx refuses to remember all my fields. It only remembers the name, and leaves the rest (e-mail and URL) empty. If I enter the missing fields and hit "Preview", they are empty again. If I just hit "Post", the comment goes up with empty fields.
Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at Monday, August 20 2007 02:13 PM (9imyF)
3
The "Delayed Write Failed" error might have something to do with dirty data cached in the host RAM and not with the drive's built-in cache.Yep. When I said I'd disabled write caching, I meant I'd disabled Windows' write caching. At least, I think that's what that option is supposed to do. But it's Windows, so who knows. With my new PC I'm going to try eSATA and see how that goes.
Minx refuses to remember all my fields.Sorry about that. I've had a couple of reports of that problem, but haven't tracked it down yet.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Monday, August 20 2007 04:57 PM (PiXy!)
4
Pete, try deleting your "mee.nu" cookie. (Of course, it means you'll have to log in again for mee.nu blogs which only permit commenting by registered users e.g. mine.)
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at Monday, August 20 2007 07:20 PM (+rSRq)
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The Seagate FreeAgent Pro 500 GB drive that I bought earlier this month and plugged into my system (new in March, Vista, USB 2.0, etc) can be set to "never" spin down via the included software, if that's what you like.
I guess I'm glad I paid extra for the Seagate. (But now it's on sale for less than I paid. *grumble*)
And now, where I work, they're selling fairly big no-name brand external drives (320GB, I think) for $90. Argh. But I'm a big fan of Seagate products anyway.
I guess I'm glad I paid extra for the Seagate. (But now it's on sale for less than I paid. *grumble*)
And now, where I work, they're selling fairly big no-name brand external drives (320GB, I think) for $90. Argh. But I'm a big fan of Seagate products anyway.
Posted by: atomic_fungus at Tuesday, August 21 2007 11:27 AM (snLma)
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I've also found Seagate drives to be excellent. Western Digital do seem to be pretty good too, and cheaper. Everyone has their horror story and a particular brand they'll never touch again, but rarely on a statistically meaningful sample set.
(Then again, I had ten or twelve of those IBM Deathstars in various machines at home and work... The only saving grace was that they didn't go quietly, so you had time to back up your data.)
(Then again, I had ten or twelve of those IBM Deathstars in various machines at home and work... The only saving grace was that they didn't go quietly, so you had time to back up your data.)
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Tuesday, August 21 2007 03:23 PM (PiXy!)
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