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#1 2014-03-06 23:18:16

sanhuesoft
Member
Registered: 2013-11-30
Posts: 37

[SOLVED] External USB Drive formatted in ext4 is always working

I recently bought a new external USB drive for massive storage (a Seagate Expansion 4TB), but I have a question now. I saw that when the unit is working the flash led is blinking, and when the unit is on "stand-by" (or something like that) the flash keeps steady.

So when the unit is mounted in Linux the led keeps flashing all the time. On windows, the led blinks just when the unit is working (reading-writing). The led stops flashing after a while.

I'm afraid that something could happen to the drive because of this. What do you think?

Last edited by sanhuesoft (2014-03-09 00:57:25)


Laptop: Lenovo G460, Core i3 M370, 8GB Ram, Seagate Momentus 500GB, Arch Linux
Storage: Seagate Expansion Drive 4TB, Toshiba Canvio 500GB, Cirago 500GB
Mobile: Samsung Galaxy S3, Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 T211 7"
Audio: Bose Companion 20, Shure SRH440, Shure SE215, Sennheiser HD202

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#2 2014-03-07 03:19:30

stqn
Member
Registered: 2010-03-19
Posts: 1,191
Website

Re: [SOLVED] External USB Drive formatted in ext4 is always working

I think that the disk should behave the same under Linux and Windows. Is there a program accessing the disk under Linux? Maybe some indexing tool? I believe KDE may have such a tool running by default… (But I use Xfce so I’m not sure.)

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#3 2014-03-07 03:31:56

sanhuesoft
Member
Registered: 2013-11-30
Posts: 37

Re: [SOLVED] External USB Drive formatted in ext4 is always working

I checked the Nepomuk settings and I I disabled it to confirm, but the led still blinking. It looks like some program is using it, but I don't know which one... I will try a Live CD to see what happen.


Laptop: Lenovo G460, Core i3 M370, 8GB Ram, Seagate Momentus 500GB, Arch Linux
Storage: Seagate Expansion Drive 4TB, Toshiba Canvio 500GB, Cirago 500GB
Mobile: Samsung Galaxy S3, Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 T211 7"
Audio: Bose Companion 20, Shure SRH440, Shure SE215, Sennheiser HD202

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#4 2014-03-07 03:49:16

sanhuesoft
Member
Registered: 2013-11-30
Posts: 37

Re: [SOLVED] External USB Drive formatted in ext4 is always working

I checked with a GNOME distro Live CD <Fedora 16>, but it's the same. The led keeps blinking all the time when the unit is mounted. Just as I said, in Windows doesn't happens the same. For this reason is that I'm affraid that something happens to the drive. If someone has a theory about it, I would like to read it.

Last edited by sanhuesoft (2014-03-07 16:58:29)


Laptop: Lenovo G460, Core i3 M370, 8GB Ram, Seagate Momentus 500GB, Arch Linux
Storage: Seagate Expansion Drive 4TB, Toshiba Canvio 500GB, Cirago 500GB
Mobile: Samsung Galaxy S3, Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 T211 7"
Audio: Bose Companion 20, Shure SRH440, Shure SE215, Sennheiser HD202

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#5 2014-03-07 11:17:02

R00KIE
Forum Fellow
From: Between a computer and a chair
Registered: 2008-09-14
Posts: 4,734

Re: [SOLVED] External USB Drive formatted in ext4 is always working

Probably just the lazy ext4 init, it will stop after it finishes what it has to do.


R00KIE
Tm90aGluZyB0byBzZWUgaGVyZSwgbW92ZSBhbG9uZy4K

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#6 2014-03-07 12:26:38

brebs
Member
Registered: 2007-04-03
Posts: 3,742

Re: [SOLVED] External USB Drive formatted in ext4 is always working

First thing I would try is hdparm.

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#7 2014-03-07 15:33:58

sanhuesoft
Member
Registered: 2013-11-30
Posts: 37

Re: [SOLVED] External USB Drive formatted in ext4 is always working

R00KIE wrote:

Probably just the lazy ext4 init, it will stop after it finishes what it has to do.

I checked and you're just right. I tried mounting a NTFS partition of a USB drive, and after a while the led stops blinking.   

brebs wrote:

First thing I would try is hdparm.

I will check that.

Last edited by sanhuesoft (2014-03-07 16:59:09)


Laptop: Lenovo G460, Core i3 M370, 8GB Ram, Seagate Momentus 500GB, Arch Linux
Storage: Seagate Expansion Drive 4TB, Toshiba Canvio 500GB, Cirago 500GB
Mobile: Samsung Galaxy S3, Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 T211 7"
Audio: Bose Companion 20, Shure SRH440, Shure SE215, Sennheiser HD202

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#8 2014-03-09 00:59:49

sanhuesoft
Member
Registered: 2013-11-30
Posts: 37

Re: [SOLVED] External USB Drive formatted in ext4 is always working

It was just the ext4 initializating the i-nodes tables. I formatted using:

sudo mkfs.ext4 -E lazy_itable_init=0,lazy_journal_init=0 /dev/sdXY

to see when the initialization was finished, and after that, it's alright.

This is because ext4 doesn't initializate the tables during the format, but it makes on the first mounting of the partition.


Laptop: Lenovo G460, Core i3 M370, 8GB Ram, Seagate Momentus 500GB, Arch Linux
Storage: Seagate Expansion Drive 4TB, Toshiba Canvio 500GB, Cirago 500GB
Mobile: Samsung Galaxy S3, Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 T211 7"
Audio: Bose Companion 20, Shure SRH440, Shure SE215, Sennheiser HD202

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