Linea Recta wrote:
"Elmo" schreef in bericht
...
On 2/28/2012 5:39 AM, Linea Recta wrote:
For some time now I'm using an external harddisk which often misbehaves.
The problem is that after some time it seems to go in some stand by mode.
Then, when I try to access this drive (or another external drive) it
often
disconnects (hearing the disconnect sound)
I can hear the sound of the drive starting up slowly, but seemingly often
too late.
I suppose this has to do with some kind of time-out parameter? Can I
increase this setting somewhere?

BTW This problem only occurs when using the drive with the (Windows XP)
PC.
Using the drive connected to the (Vista) notebook it never fails.

- Medion USB harddisk with its own power adaptor.
Here's something you can try:

Open Device Manager, open the properties on each USB hub, click the
Power tab, and deselect "Allow the computer to turn off this device to
save power".



I just checked all USB hubs and all power saving boxes where already
unchecked.
I suppose the problem is due to in-the-drive integrated stupidity?



The stupidity is inside the box, and I don't think software has
control of it. It was done in this way, to reduce the incidences
of drive high operating temperatures, as a result of designing
3.5" hard drive housings without cooling solutions on them.
You're trying to force 6-12W through a sealed plastic box.
Spindown was seen to be "better", than providing proper cooling.
Now, if you're running a backup that writes at 5MB/sec for
two hours, the drive remains spinning, and the "toasting" of
the drive will continue (because this brain dead feature
can't help in that case). Spindown as a cooling solution, only
helps for "quiet desktops", where you don't use the drive much.

But I can't give you any implementation details. While the hard
drive standard itself has options like that, in cases when this
happens, I can't be sure it is the drive, or the USB chip that
is doing it. In terms of a division of labor, it makes sense
for the drive itself to be doing this (short timeout followed
by spindown). But in cases where the manufacturer wants to
enforce this in all cases, I suppose they could add a feature
to the USB adapter chip, to issue the command as well.

The long spinup time for the drive, might be responsible for
a timeout. Drives are allowed 35 seconds in the BIOS, to
spin up (and 35 seconds may be allocated in the ATA/ATAPI spec),
but in Windows, a delayed write failure (happening because the
OS thinks the drive is running), occurs in about 5 seconds or so.
Whatever that number is, they don't wait 35 seconds before
declaring a problem.

I suppose, as experimenters, we could take a drive we regularly
use in a desktop computer, and pop it into the Seagate or
WD housing, and see if the same bad behavior is still present.
If that was the case, then we'd know it was the USB chip
doing it.

Paul