Arch Linux

daigennki

Member

Registered: 2020-10-23

Posts: 33

External USB HDD power disconnected before spinning down

I have a USB HDD always connected to my PC, and it doesn't seem to spin down when the computer gets shut down, causing it to make the unpleasant "force shutdown" noise. I don't think this causes any data loss since its partitions seem to be unmounted properly, but I'm not sure if it's okay for the HDD physically, and it's just an unpleasant noise. What would be the "proper" way to have it spin down before the PC shuts down? I put together a script that runs

hdparm -S 1 /dev/sda
sleep 5

to have it spin down before shutdown, and while it works, it doesn't really feel like the proper way to fix it.
If it matters at all, the motherboard it's connected to is an ASUS Z170-K, and it's connected to the USB 10Gbps ports on the rear I/O, which are controlled by an ASM1142. However, the same happens even when connecting it to the USB 3.0 front panel ports controlled by the Intel chipset.