[SOLVED] External hard drive doing noises when using ext4

miguelitu · 2012-07-13 01:26:35

Hello there,

I have a Seagate 1TB external disk used mainly for backups of my personal files. I had this on NTFS because I thought it would be better for a dual boot enviroment.

As I don't even remember the last time I booted on windows, I've been changing my setup for linux-only, so I reformatted the external drive with ext4.

But after this, whenever the HD is mounted, it stays awake doing constant clicking noises and don't go to sleep mode.

The same does not happen if formatted with ntfs, or ext2/3.

Any idea what might be causing this?

Thank you in advance.

Last edited by miguelitu (2012-07-16 21:56:00)

brebs · 2012-07-13 13:51:12

Does this stop the clicking:

hdparm -B 255 /dev/sdb

Or whatever device your drive is. Also try 254 instead of 255.

miguelitu · 2012-07-14 11:21:08

thank you

but I believe that is not supported by external disks

HDIO_DRIVE_CMD failed: Invalid argument
APM_level = not supported

I also tried to disable journalism, but nothing change.

If I keep it on EXT3 would it be a loss comparing it with EXT4?

x33a · 2012-07-14 12:11:42

miguelitu wrote:

I also tried to disable journalism, but nothing change.
If I keep it on EXT3 would it be a loss comparing it with EXT4?

That should be "journaling". Also, keep it on ext3, it's not very noticeably different from ext4, especially since you will only be using it for backups.

R00KIE · 2012-07-14 13:32:22

x33a wrote:

miguelitu wrote:
I also tried to disable journalism, but nothing change.
If I keep it on EXT3 would it be a loss comparing it with EXT4?
That should be "journaling". Also, keep it on ext3, it's not very noticeably different from ext4, especially since you will only be using it for backups.

Not much of a difference until you decide to fsck the drive, which you should do regularly, more so if it is a drive with backups. Ext3 will take ages to check, specially taking into account that it is a 1TB drive on (most probably) usb2, ext4 will take a lot less time to check.

miguelitu · 2012-07-16 21:55:02

ops, yeah, I meant journaling

well, thanks everyone for the advice, I'll keep with EXT3 then, I'll mark this as solved, although I'm still annoyed for not founding out why EXT4 did'nt work properly.

smudge · 2012-07-17 03:02:24

I came across ext4lazyinit the other day after formatting a 100GB drive.

Some others have too:
http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermai … 08441.html
http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-92 … art-0.html

Maybe it explains your problem. Just leave it plugged in for a while and it should calm down

x33a · 2012-07-17 04:24:58

@ smudge

that's very interesting. Thanks for the links.

miguelitu · 2012-07-27 01:29:44

thank you smudge and everyone
now it is solved for good.

Arch Linux

#1 2012-07-13 01:26:35

[SOLVED] External hard drive doing noises when using ext4

#2 2012-07-13 13:51:12

Re: [SOLVED] External hard drive doing noises when using ext4

#3 2012-07-14 11:21:08

Re: [SOLVED] External hard drive doing noises when using ext4

#4 2012-07-14 12:11:42

Re: [SOLVED] External hard drive doing noises when using ext4

#5 2012-07-14 13:32:22

Re: [SOLVED] External hard drive doing noises when using ext4

#6 2012-07-16 21:55:02

Re: [SOLVED] External hard drive doing noises when using ext4

#7 2012-07-17 03:02:24

Re: [SOLVED] External hard drive doing noises when using ext4

#8 2012-07-17 04:24:58

Re: [SOLVED] External hard drive doing noises when using ext4

#9 2012-07-27 01:29:44

Re: [SOLVED] External hard drive doing noises when using ext4

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