Arch Linux

indianahorst

Member

Registered: 2008-08-23

Posts: 127

[hdparm] Harddisk doesn't spindown

Hello everyone,

I'm using a TOSHIBA DT01ABA300 as internal harddisk, connected via SATA. It's not the system disk, I'm just using it as data store.

I can put it into standby with

$ sudo hdparm -y /dev/sdb
$ sudo hdparm -C /dev/sdb
/dev/sdb:
 drive state is:  standby

Problem: it doesn't spindown after the time span I configured with hdparm:

 sudo hdparm -B 1 -S 3 /dev/sdb

With this example command, it should go to standby after 15 seconds with no access (in reality, I will use a standby time of 20 minutes).

How can I find out which process prevents the disk to go to sleep?

null

Member

Registered: 2009-05-06

Posts: 398

Re: [hdparm] Harddisk doesn't spindown

Is it mounted? Than you can try 'lsof /mount/path' to find all processes that are accessing the disc content.

xvzf

Member

Registered: 2014-05-18

Posts: 86

Re: [hdparm] Harddisk doesn't spindown

Please post a dump of

dmesg

Maybe there is some more info.
I configured my HGST Deskstar NAS 3TB spindown using

hdparm -B 150 -S 150 /dev/sd[abcdefghi]

I have disks manufactured in 2013 and in 2015, the ones in 2013 do not spin down automatically if the -B and -S is below 125. The others do.

Also, if u are running a filesystem like zfs, it might check sth in the background which might need 1-2 hours (at least in my case).

Another suggestion is running

sync

Maybe some data is still in cache that has not been written to disk.

Cheers,
Matthias

---

My Github

indianahorst

Member

Registered: 2008-08-23

Posts: 127

Re: [hdparm] Harddisk doesn't spindown

Is it mounted? Than you can try 'lsof /mount/path' to find all processes that are accessing the disc content.

Yes, it is mounted, but there are no obvious processes accessing the filesystem.

xvzf

Member

Registered: 2014-05-18

Posts: 86

Re: [hdparm] Harddisk doesn't spindown

Is it mounted? Than you can try 'lsof /mount/path' to find all processes that are accessing the disc content.

Yes, it is mounted, but there are no obvious processes accessing the filesystem.

Without extendet info (as I posted above), we can't help you here..

---

My Github

sesa

Member

Registered: 2017-02-09

Posts: 2

Re: [hdparm] Harddisk doesn't spindown

It is not a matter of processes accessing the filesystem:
Hitachi Deskstar 5K3000 HDS5C3030BLE630 and identical construction TOSHIBA DT01ABA300 do simply not work with 'hdparm -S'
Use hd-idle instead

indianahorst

Member

Registered: 2008-08-23

Posts: 127

Re: [hdparm] Harddisk doesn't spindown

It is not a matter of processes accessing the filesystem:
Hitachi Deskstar 5K3000 HDS5C3030BLE630 and identical construction TOSHIBA DT01ABA300 do simply not work with 'hdparm -S'
Use hd-idle instead

Thank you for this helpfull hint! It works without problems with hd-idle!