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Spfnym

Member

Registered: 2018-05-01

Posts: 12

Hard drives spinning up occasionally while on standby

My external hard drives should be on standby. However, they spin up every so often. Because this produces sound, I finally decided to try to figure this thing out. I had the hunch that it wasn't accessing any files really so I had to find some program that is even more thorough about it so I went with blktrace.

Here are my test results. The first three events didn't spin up the hard drive but the last three did:

[mikko@localhost lvdata]$ sudo blktrace -d /dev/sdf -o - | blkparse -i -
[sudo] password for mikko: 
  8,80   1        1     0.000000000  7868  C   N [0]
  8,80   2        1 1266874889.709163708  8781  I   N 0 [pool-udisksd]
  8,80   2        2 1266874889.709164848  8781  D   N 0 [pool-udisksd]
  8,80   4        1   600.031605848  9065  I   N 0 [pool-udisksd]
  8,80   4        2   600.031606991  9065  D   N 0 [pool-udisksd]
  8,80   1        2   607.059692844  7869  C   N [0]
^CCPU1 (8,80):
 Reads Queued:           0,        0KiB  Writes Queued:           0,        0KiB
 Read Dispatches:        0,        0KiB  Write Dispatches:        0,        0KiB
 Reads Requeued:         0               Writes Requeued:         0
 Reads Completed:        0,        0KiB  Writes Completed:        0,        0KiB
 Read Merges:            0,        0KiB  Write Merges:            0,        0KiB
 Read depth:             2               Write depth:             0
 PC Reads Queued:        0,        0KiB  PC Writes Queued:        0,        0KiB
 PC Read Disp.:          0,        0KiB  PC Write Disp.:          0,        0KiB
 PC Reads Req.:          0               PC Writes Req.:          0
 PC Reads Compl.:        2               PC Writes Compl.:        0
 IO unplugs:             0               Timer unplugs:           0
CPU2 (8,80):
 Reads Queued:           0,        0KiB  Writes Queued:           0,        0KiB
 Read Dispatches:        0,        0KiB  Write Dispatches:        0,        0KiB
 Reads Requeued:         0               Writes Requeued:         0
 Reads Completed:        0,        0KiB  Writes Completed:        0,        0KiB
 Read Merges:            0,        0KiB  Write Merges:            0,        0KiB
 Read depth:             2               Write depth:             0
 PC Reads Queued:        0,        0KiB  PC Writes Queued:        0,        0KiB
 PC Read Disp.:          1,        0KiB  PC Write Disp.:          0,        0KiB
 PC Reads Req.:          0               PC Writes Req.:          0
 PC Reads Compl.:        0               PC Writes Compl.:        0
 IO unplugs:             0               Timer unplugs:           0
CPU4 (8,80):
 Reads Queued:           0,        0KiB  Writes Queued:           0,        0KiB
 Read Dispatches:        0,        0KiB  Write Dispatches:        0,        0KiB
 Reads Requeued:         0               Writes Requeued:         0
 Reads Completed:        0,        0KiB  Writes Completed:        0,        0KiB
 Read Merges:            0,        0KiB  Write Merges:            0,        0KiB
 Read depth:             2               Write depth:             0
 PC Reads Queued:        0,        0KiB  PC Writes Queued:        0,        0KiB
 PC Read Disp.:          1,        0KiB  PC Write Disp.:          0,        0KiB
 PC Reads Req.:          0               PC Writes Req.:          0
 PC Reads Compl.:        0               PC Writes Compl.:        0
 IO unplugs:             0               Timer unplugs:           0

Total (8,80):
 Reads Queued:           0,        0KiB  Writes Queued:           0,        0KiB
 Read Dispatches:        0,        0KiB  Write Dispatches:        0,        0KiB
 Reads Requeued:         0               Writes Requeued:         0
 Reads Completed:        0,        0KiB  Writes Completed:        0,        0KiB
 Read Merges:            0,        0KiB  Write Merges:            0,        0KiB
 PC Reads Queued:        0,        0KiB  PC Writes Queued:        0,        0KiB
 PC Read Disp.:          2,        0KiB  PC Write Disp.:          0,        0KiB
 PC Reads Req.:          0               PC Writes Req.:          0
 PC Reads Compl.:        2               PC Writes Compl.:        0
 IO unplugs:             0               Timer unplugs:           0

Throughput (R/W): 0KiB/s / 0KiB/s
Events (8,80): 6 entries
Skips: 0 forward (0 -   0.0%)

I found some ideas about disabling polling done by udisks, but I think it was all for udisks 1 and not 2 which is what I use. So, how do I make my hard drives indeed keep silent when they are supposedly on standby? And what are the risks of doing that?