WRT160NL: Automatic spin-down of external USB hard disks?

Hello,
do external hard disks automatically spin down after a period with no access/use when connected with the USB port of the WRT160NL?

In reference to your post could you please let me know that when you say "spin down" do you mean that does the hard drive goes into sleep mode when it is not in use?
Did you try to connect another hard drive and check whether it is the same case or not?

Similar Messages

The finder window for an external USB hard disk suddenly started separating files by time (today, yesterday, etc.) and stopped allowing me to change column width, order, etc. Also the header bar shifted to flat white from gray.

The finder window for an external USB hard disk suddenly started separating files by time (today, yesterday, etc.) and stopped allowing me to change column width, order, etc. Also the header bar shifted to flat white from gray.
All was normal until the icon for the disk stopped showing up on the desktop when I would plug it in. I rebooted the computer, and the disk icon now shows up but this new look to the finder window started as a result. The hard disk does not have this problem when I use it on another Mac running Snow leopard. Also, two other external hard disks that I use on this computer running lion 7.4 still have the normal header bars with columns that can be reordered, etc.
I have tried looking in preferences and other places but have not seen this discussed.

Well duh - I finally figured out that somehow in the View options for the hard drive, the "arrange by" option had been changed to "by date" from "none". Not sure how that happened, I had never used the "view options" menu tem before. Changing "arrange by" back to "none" gets the gray column headers and the collapsible folder icons back.

Arch: Install to & run from External USB Hard Disk Drive (HDD)

I wanted to play with ArchLinux 2009.02, but replacing the existing Debian-Lenny on the laptop's HDD wasn't an option. So I experimented with installing Arch on an external USB Hard Disk Drive.
I have tried to make this "newbie-friendly", so I hope the more experienced will forgive the detail.
Materials:
Three year old Dell Inspiron 6000
CPU = 2.0 GHz Pentium
RAM = 2.0 GB
Internal HDD = 80 GB
Internal CD/DVD R/RW
External USB HDD = Freecom FHD-2 Pro 80 GB
Archlinux 2009.02 install CD
Steps to install:
1. I put the Archlinux install CD in the drive and connected the external 80 GB HDD in the USB port.
2. When the Dell laptop was booted, I pressed F2 to enter the BIOS setup. I edited the boot sequence to the following:
Internal CD/DVD
External USB device
Internal HDD
On the Dell, you can also press F12 to select the preferred boot device for that boot.
3. I started the laptop and the Archlinux installation menu came up and I proceeded with installation following the "Official Arch Linux Install Guide" and the "Beginners Guide".
4. Used km to change to UK keyboard layout and then began the installer script (/arch/setup). I was installing from the core CD so I skipped the network steps.
5. HDD preparation.
This was fairly straightforward with two cautions:
(a) Make very sure that the external HDD (sdb) is selected for the operations.
(b) Remember to set the Bootable Flag for the first (/) partition on the HDD.
I chose 20 GB for /, 2 GB for swap and the remainder for /home.
6. The package selection and installation was fairly straightforward.
7. Configuration of System
This was section was straightforward with one warning:
USB had to be added to the HOOKS in the /etc/mkinitcpio.conf file!
I found this to be essential for my external USB HDD to function as a bootable device. Otherwise I got the same sorts of errors relating to unrecognisable file system types that other people have reported in the forum.
The relevant line from the end of the edited /etc/mkinitcpio.conf file is below:
HOOKS="base udev autodetect pata scsi sata usb filesystems"
8. Installation of GRUB was the other point where caution and/or correction was necessary.
When it asked where GRUB should be installed, I had to select sdb (my external USB HDD) and not any of the particular partitions on sdb. If the root partition sdb1 was selected then the laptop won't boot from the external USB HDD.
The GRUB /boot/grub/menu.lst as written by the installation routine specifies hd(1,0) which doesn't work when you try to reboot from the external USB HDD. When you boot Arch from the external USB HDD, as far as Arch is concerned - at that point in time - the external USB HDD is the first drive in the system. To fix this:
(a) When the Arch boot menu comes up, press e to edit the grub entries.
(b) Change the first line to hd(0,0)
(c) To the end of the kernel line add rootdelay=8
(d) Press b to boot the system with these temporary corrections.
(e) Once your Arch system has booted, edit the /boot/grub/menu.lst to make the above changes permanent.
The relevant portion of my /boot/grub/menu.lst looks like the following:
# (0) Arch Linux
title Arch Linux
root (hd0,0)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz26 root=/dev/disk/by-uuid/... ro rootdelay=8
initrd /boot/kernel26.img
# (1) Arch Linux
title Arch Linux Fallback
root (hd0,0)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz26 root=/dev/disk/by-uuid/... ro rootdelay=8
initrd /boot/kernel26-fallback.img
9. The laptop happily and consistently boots Arch Linux from the external USB HDD when it's plugged in before startup/booting.
Running Arch from the external USB HDD seems as quick as running Debian from the internal HDD.
So if there is a performance penalty associated with using an external USB HDD, my wife and I haven't noticed.
In summary, the three essential points to address during installation to an external USB HDD are:
Remember to set the bootable flag for the first partition.
Add USB to the HOOKS for /etc/mkinitcpio.conf file.
Correct the /etc/grub/menu.lst file.
I hope this is helpful.
Ted

Hi Rookie,
As you say, it is worth remembering the rootfstype= option for the kernel line just in case someone still has problems with GRUB after making all the other changes.
I was working with the most recent Arch 2009.2 release.
I only got messages about unrecognisable file system type when I tried booting with the "stock" or "as-installed" GRUB (before I edited /boot/grub/menu.lst). After editing /boot/grub/menu.lst to identify the drive correctly and add rootdelay, GRUB was able to do the rest and everything worked OK without any error messages.
Best wishes,
Ted

HT4889 Migration Assistant to update my new Mountain Lion iMac from an external USB hard disk drive, it is constantly saying that it is "looking for other computers". It doesn't find the external drive. Why is it looking for other computers?

I'm trying to use Migration Assistant to update my new Mountain Lion iMac from an external USB hard disk drive. I told it to look for a drive, yet it is constantly saying that it is "looking for other computers". It doesn't find the external drive ... it just endlessly looks for other computers. Why is it looking for other computers at all, when I told it not to?

Wow, the wording in Migration Assistant is misleading. I've never used it before, so I thought I would try to copy my files from the external drive ... my old iMac died, but I managed to get everything I need off it, using the 'cp' command in single-user mode. So I guess I'll just have to manually copy the files from the external drive to the new machine. I was hoping that Migration Assistant might help somehow, but obviously not.
Thanks for the quick reply!

Trouble connecting to external USB hard disk through PC

I've had AirPort Extreme 802.11n for a few months which I use to connect to a printer and to share a USB hard disk between my eMac and my thinkpad. For a while everything was working beautifully. The disk showed up on my eMac desktop and in my Windows XP file explorer. Then recently the USB disk stopped connecting at all to either computer even after trying the old remedy of connecting directly to my Mac, dismounting it, and reconnecting. Then today a bunch of updates for the AirPort Utility became available and after updating to 5.3.1 on my eMac the disk shows up on my eMac again. But on my PC here's the situation: the disk appears in the AirPort Utility for Windows (5.3.1) but I can't find it in Windows file explorer. I tried the alternative ways of connecting shown here:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=306119
but no dice.

Uhmmmmmm, you meant to say the Macbook Air DOES have (2) USB PORTS
GENEDI, yes, you can connect a 2.5" USB external HD to your Mac AIR, ...... done it a 1000 times

External USB hard disk fails to boot

I installed Arch Linux on an external USB Lacie 1 TB Hard Disk. I followed instructions on WiKi: "install from exisiting linux", method 2, since I already have Linux installed
on the internal HDD of my laptop (dual boot with Windows, also with Grub as bootloader).
Problem: The external HDD stalls during boot right after the "Welcome to Grub!" - message. I can only hard-reset my laptop from there.
The external HDD has msdos Partition Table. It is recognized by BIOS just fine, since I can choose to boot from it. It has following (very simple) partition setup:
[root@arch-laptop chris]# fdisk -l /dev/sdb
Disk /dev/sdb: 931.5 GiB, 1000204886016 bytes, 1953525168 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: dos
Disk identifier: 0x000c9610
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 * 2048 40962047 20480000 83 Linux
So there's just the root partition, no boot or home partition defined. Grub installed to the external HDD with no errors.
Here's the grub.cfg auto-generated, without anything adapted. The UUID of the external HDD /dev/sdb1 is correct.
[root@arch-laptop grub]# cat grub.cfg
# DO NOT EDIT THIS FILE
# It is automatically generated by grub-mkconfig using templates
# from /etc/grub.d and settings from /etc/default/grub
### BEGIN /etc/grub.d/00_header ###
insmod part_gpt
insmod part_msdos
if [ -s $prefix/grubenv ]; then
load_env
fi
if [ "${next_entry}" ] ; then
set default="${next_entry}"
set next_entry=
save_env next_entry
set boot_once=true
else
set default="0"
fi
if [ x"${feature_menuentry_id}" = xy ]; then
menuentry_id_option="--id"
else
menuentry_id_option=""
fi
export menuentry_id_option
if [ "${prev_saved_entry}" ]; then
set saved_entry="${prev_saved_entry}"
save_env saved_entry
set prev_saved_entry=
save_env prev_saved_entry
set boot_once=true
fi
function savedefault {
if [ -z "${boot_once}" ]; then
saved_entry="${chosen}"
save_env saved_entry
fi
function load_video {
if [ x$feature_all_video_module = xy ]; then
insmod all_video
else
insmod efi_gop
insmod efi_uga
insmod ieee1275_fb
insmod vbe
insmod vga
insmod video_bochs
insmod video_cirrus
fi
if [ x$feature_default_font_path = xy ] ; then
font=unicode
else
insmod part_msdos
insmod ext2
set root='hd1,msdos1'
if [ x$feature_platform_search_hint = xy ]; then
search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root --hint-bios=hd1,msdos1 --hint-efi=hd1,msdos1 --hint-baremetal=ahci1,msdos1 5fe1d28c-2640-4b5c-b98b-75d147479348
else
search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root 5fe1d28c-2640-4b5c-b98b-75d147479348
fi
font="/usr/share/grub/unicode.pf2"
fi
if loadfont $font ; then
set gfxmode=auto
load_video
insmod gfxterm
set locale_dir=$prefix/locale
set lang=en_US
insmod gettext
fi
terminal_input console
terminal_output gfxterm
if [ x$feature_timeout_style = xy ] ; then
set timeout_style=menu
set timeout=5
# Fallback normal timeout code in case the timeout_style feature is
# unavailable.
else
set timeout=5
fi
### END /etc/grub.d/00_header ###
### BEGIN /etc/grub.d/10_archlinux ###
menuentry "Arch Linux pkg-linux kernel" --class arch-linux --class arch --class gnu-linux --class gnu --class os {
if [ x$feature_all_video_module = xy ]; then
insmod all_video
fi
set gfxpayload=keep
insmod ext2
if [ x$feature_platform_search_hint = xy ]; then
search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root --hint-bios=hd1,msdos1 --hint-efi=hd1,msdos1 --hint-baremetal=ahci1,msdos1 5fe1d28c-2640-4b5c-b98b-75d147479348
else
search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root 5fe1d28c-2640-4b5c-b98b-75d147479348
fi
echo 'Loading Arch Linux pkg-linux kernel ...'
linux /boot/vmlinuz-linux root=UUID=5fe1d28c-2640-4b5c-b98b-75d147479348 rw quiet
echo 'Loading Arch Linux pkg-linux kernel initramfs ...'
initrd /boot/initramfs-linux.img
menuentry "Arch Linux pkg-linux kernel (fallback initramfs)" --class arch-linux --class arch --class gnu-linux --class gnu --class os {
if [ x$feature_all_video_module = xy ]; then
insmod all_video
fi
set gfxpayload=keep
insmod ext2
if [ x$feature_platform_search_hint = xy ]; then
search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root --hint-bios=hd1,msdos1 --hint-efi=hd1,msdos1 --hint-baremetal=ahci1,msdos1 5fe1d28c-2640-4b5c-b98b-75d147479348
else
search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root 5fe1d28c-2640-4b5c-b98b-75d147479348
fi
echo 'Loading Arch Linux pkg-linux kernel ...'
linux /boot/vmlinuz-linux root=UUID=5fe1d28c-2640-4b5c-b98b-75d147479348 rw quiet
echo 'Loading Arch Linux pkg-linux kernel fallback initramfs ...'
initrd /boot/initramfs-linux-fallback.img
### END /etc/grub.d/10_archlinux ###
### BEGIN /etc/grub.d/10_linux ###
menuentry 'Arch Linux' --class arch --class gnu-linux --class gnu --class os $menuentry_id_option 'gnulinux-simple-5fe1d28c-2640-4b5c-b98b-75d147479348' {
load_video
set gfxpayload=keep
insmod gzio
insmod part_msdos
insmod ext2
set root='hd1,msdos1'
if [ x$feature_platform_search_hint = xy ]; then
search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root --hint-bios=hd1,msdos1 --hint-efi=hd1,msdos1 --hint-baremetal=ahci1,msdos1 5fe1d28c-2640-4b5c-b98b-75d147479348
else
search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root 5fe1d28c-2640-4b5c-b98b-75d147479348
fi
echo 'Loading Linux linux ...'
linux /boot/vmlinuz-linux root=UUID=5fe1d28c-2640-4b5c-b98b-75d147479348 rw quiet
echo 'Loading initial ramdisk ...'
initrd /boot/initramfs-linux.img
submenu 'Advanced options for Arch Linux' $menuentry_id_option 'gnulinux-advanced-5fe1d28c-2640-4b5c-b98b-75d147479348' {
menuentry 'Arch Linux, with Linux linux' --class arch --class gnu-linux --class gnu --class os $menuentry_id_option 'gnulinux-linux-advanced-5fe1d28c-2640-4b5c-b98b-75d147479348' {
load_video
set gfxpayload=keep
insmod gzio
insmod part_msdos
insmod ext2
set root='hd1,msdos1'
if [ x$feature_platform_search_hint = xy ]; then
search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root --hint-bios=hd1,msdos1 --hint-efi=hd1,msdos1 --hint-baremetal=ahci1,msdos1 5fe1d28c-2640-4b5c-b98b-75d147479348
else
search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root 5fe1d28c-2640-4b5c-b98b-75d147479348
fi
echo 'Loading Linux linux ...'
linux /boot/vmlinuz-linux root=UUID=5fe1d28c-2640-4b5c-b98b-75d147479348 rw quiet
echo 'Loading initial ramdisk ...'
initrd /boot/initramfs-linux.img
### END /etc/grub.d/10_linux ###
### BEGIN /etc/grub.d/20_linux_xen ###
### END /etc/grub.d/20_linux_xen ###
### BEGIN /etc/grub.d/30_os-prober ###
### END /etc/grub.d/30_os-prober ###
### BEGIN /etc/grub.d/40_custom ###
# This file provides an easy way to add custom menu entries. Simply type the
# menu entries you want to add after this comment. Be careful not to change
# the 'exec tail' line above.
### END /etc/grub.d/40_custom ###
### BEGIN /etc/grub.d/41_custom ###
if [ -f ${config_directory}/custom.cfg ]; then
source ${config_directory}/custom.cfg
elif [ -z "${config_directory}" -a -f $prefix/custom.cfg ]; then
source $prefix/custom.cfg;
fi
### END /etc/grub.d/41_custom ###
### BEGIN /etc/grub.d/60_memtest86+ ###
### END /etc/grub.d/60_memtest86+ ###
the internal HDD (/dev/sda) also has GRUB installed, without any problems, with a graphical console menu.
GRUB version is 2.02
laptop: dv6-6b41ed
Legacy BIOS (no EFI / UEFI).
Any ideas on how to solve / troubleshoot this?
Last edited by christopher72 (2014-04-21 15:05:21)

Any hooks in particular? I don't know which hook to add other then the 'blocks' hook, which is there already:
HOOKS="base udev autodetect modconf block filesystems keyboard fsck"
Also, I don't think that could be the problem since loading the initramfs image takes place after choosing something from the Grub Menu. That menu never appears, I just get "welcome to grub!" with a blinking cursor underneath.
I did add "insmod usbms" in grub.cfg, but that didn't change anything.
What strikes me as odd is that in grub.cfg, the disk is referred to as "hd1", where I think it could just as well be "hd0" if that's the first hard disk the BIOS boots from. But I'm not sure if that really matters since the search is done with the UUID.
Another thing I tested earlier: I dd 'd the Arch Live image to the external usb HDD, and then it boots fine...

Backup to external USB hard disk

I've been trying to use rsync to backup my internal HD to an external USB one. I'm attempting to backup everything from /Users/ on down. There are two users on this G5, and attempts to access the other user's directories/files are being blocked with "permission denied" message.
Hoping root could reign with access privileges to all users, I've used "sudo -u root crontab -e" to set up a crontab entry to invoke a file containing the actual backup command itself:
"rsync -av --exclude-from=/Volumes/'Macintosh HD'/Users/jdorin/SysBackupExclude --progress /Volumes/'Macintosh HD'/Users /Volumes/MacBack > echo -n"
The SysBackupExclude file contains just:
/Macintosh HD/Users/user1/Library/Caches
/Macintosh HD/Users/user1/.Trash/Caches
/Macintosh HD/Users/user2/Library/Caches
/Macintosh HD/Users/user2/.Trash/Caches
I'm "user1," and my files are getting backed up. But the emailed backup status report tells me "permission denied" for each directory under "user2," as:
rsync: opendir "/Volumes/Macintosh HD/Users/user2/.Trash" failed: Permission denied (13)
rsync: opendir "/Volumes/Macintosh HD/Users/user2/Desktop" failed: Permission denied (13)
How can I backup all users on my Mac?

I never unplug the external harddrive, and the error message comes up only occassionaly upon startup. Maybe the USB connection gets disrupted enough to cause the computer to see it as disconnected and then reconnected while the iMac is powered.

Unable to boot MBA from external USB hard disk

I'm trying to boot an Air from an external hard disk, but the partition is not being recognized when I boot up and hold down the OPTION key. I've tried making bootable clones with Disk Utility (Restore), Carbon Copy Cloner and SuperDuper and none of the three pop up as an available boot partition. The external drive was properly partitioned as a GUID disk. Any ideas what the problem could be?

Did you also format the drive Mac OS X Extended, Journaled? As follows:
Extended Hard Drive Preparation
1. Open Disk Utility in your Utilities folder. If you need to reformat your startup volume, then you must boot from your OS X Installer Disc. After the installer loads select your language and click on the Continue button. When the menu bar appears select Disk Utility from the Installer menu (Utilities menu for Tiger or Leopard.)
2. After DU loads select your hard drive (this is the entry with the mfgr.'s ID and size) from the left side list. Note the SMART status of the drive in DU's status area. If it does not say "Verified" then the drive is failing or has failed and will need replacing. SMART info will not be reported on external drives. Otherwise, click on the Partition tab in the DU main window.
3. Click on the Options button, set the partition scheme to GUID (only required for Intel Macs) then click on the OK button. Set the number of partitions from the dropdown menu (use 1 partition unless you wish to make more.) Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Partition button and wait until the volume(s) mount on the Desktop.
4. Select the volume you just created (this is the sub-entry under the drive entry) from the left side list. Click on the Erase tab in the DU main window.
5. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Options button, check the button for Zero Data and click on OK to return to the Erase window.
6. Click on the Erase button. The format process can take up to several hours depending upon the drive size.
Steps 4-6 are optional but should be used on a drive that has never been formatted before, if the format type is not Mac OS Extended, if the partition scheme has been changed, or if a different operating system (not OS X) has been installed on the drive.

'Lombard' PowerBook won't see external USB hard disk?

I connect an external hard disk to a 'Lombard' PowerBook (Mac OS X 10.3.9) via USB and get the message "You have inserted a disk containing no volumes that Mac OS X can read." I connect the same disk to my MacBook Pro via USB and it mounts fine. I've run DiskWarrior on it, but it still won't mount on the 'Lombard'. Other USB devices work fine, e.g. USB flash drive. I know the 'Lombard' won't boot from an external USB disk, but will it also simply not read it at all?

HandyMac,
You are caught between a rock and a hard place. MacOS X 10.3.9 or earlier cannot mount/read a volume that has been partitioned using the GUID Partition Scheme adopted by the Intel Macs. PowerPC Macs use the older Apple Partition Scheme. You can reformat the USB HD on your Lombard (a PowerPC) using the Apple Partition Scheme and it will also mount/read/write on the MacBook Pro. However, if you are also using this HD as a bootable volume for the MBP, the HD must remain in the GUID Partition Scheme. The tech article below is discussing FireWire Target Disk Mode but I assume the same restriction applies also to removable media. I would confirm this on either the MBP Discussions or the Tiger Discussions.
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=303118
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=303220

Access external USB hard disk drive with REISERFS Linux filesystem.

I recently bought second-hand an older MBP Pro (2006 model) with Tiger installed, which I use as a desktop system at home and I would like to be able to connect an external IOMEGA 500 GB hard disk drive to it and have read/write access to its contents (mostly video / picture / music files). I spent a while searching on the Internet for solutions - nothing usefule came up. Does anyone in here have any ideas on how to do this? Is it possible at all after all?
P.S.: Apart from this older MBP Pro, I also have a newer model (bought in early 2008) with Leopard installed - I wouldn't mind finding some solution on my problem on that OS instead...

Hi,
The two ways I can see to possibly do it are to network the Linux machine & Drive, then use Samba to access it.
By using the Mac OS X Virtual File System (VFS) capability and writing kernel extensions, you can add support for other file systems. Examples of file systems that are not currently supported in Mac OS X but that you may wish to add to the system include the Andrew file system (AFS) and the Reiser file system (ReiserFS). If you want to support a new volume format or networking protocol, you’ll need to write a file-system kernel extension.
http://developer.apple.com/documentation/Darwin/Conceptual/KernelProgramming/Fil esystem/chapter12_section1.html

External USB hard disks recognized as internal disks by Win7 x64

Hello,
When I connect any of 3 different My Passport external disks to my laptop, they are shown as internal disks.
I can still disconnect them using usb icon in system tray.
It seems to me windows started to behave this way when I connected usb disk while it was still starting.
Is there a way to make the system show external disks as such again?
Robert M. Glaz

Hi,
In fact, this is controlled by the device itself. An RMB set to zero indicates that the device is not a removable media device. An RMB of one indicates that the device is a removable media device. Drivers obtain this information by using the StorageDeviceProperty
request. Yes, this information is stored in storage device descriptor.
STORAGE_DEVICE_DESCRIPTOR
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-gb/library/ff566971(VS.85).aspx
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here
Alex Zhao
TechNet Community Support

I bought and external usb hard disc, and i added it to time machine and now i can't use it! what do i do?

I just bought this external USB hard disc, and what I did was I put all of my pictures in there because I need space for my computer. What I did after that , is that I configured the hard disc with Time Machine, to clear some space also and to "protect" my data. But now I can't use my hard disc, I can't see my pictures I had in it and I can't use it for Time Machine either.
What can I do to get my pictures back?? Thanks!!

External USB hard disks come formatted, and unless they're specifically sold for use with Macs, they're formatted for PC's, with FAT, exFAT, or NTFS formats. Macs can read data from all three formats but can only write to FAT and exFAT formatted drives. So you could save your pictures to an external with either of those two formats. However, Time Machine needs a HD formatted and partitioned for a Mac, and if you "configured the hard disc" for use "with Time Machine," you effectively erased the pictures. However, since you "can't use it for Time Machine either," it's not clear exactly what you did, so we'd need to know that first. Also, what do you mean by "clear some space also?" On your internal or the external? And if the external, how did you do that since it already had your pictures and should still have had some empty space.
I'd suggest looking here to see if your external's format agrees with what Time Machine needs. Just look, don't actually change anything, so we have some baseline to work with. And also look at the box the external HD came in. What does it say about computer compatibility and which operating systems it's intended for (i.e., Windows, Mac, both).

[SOLVED] Kernel panic when using external USB hard drive

I have a desktop PC with a 64 bit arch install, on a Core2 Duo 6320 CPU. I have been using (and continue using right now) a 500 GB "Iomega Desktop Hard Drive" external USB hard disk without problems. But I have just bought a 3 TB "Seagate Expansion" external USB hard drive and I'm unable to use it from my Arch install. Each time I try to format it or to copy data from the PC, Arch freezes with a kernel panic. Sometimes it freezes faster and I cannot see anything, but others I am able to see the following kernel messages, repeating several times:
[11701.205071] sd 3:0:0:0: [sdf] uas_eh_abort_handler ffff880014e13380 tag 29, inflight: CMD
[11701.221297] sd 3:0:0:0: [sdf] abort completed
[11701.221313] scsi host3: uas_eh_task_mgmt: ABORT TASK failed (wrong tag 0/256)
[11701.221323] sd 3:0:0:0: [sdf] uas_eh_abort_handler ffff880014e13500 tag 30, inflight: CMD
[11701.237550] sd 3:0:0:0: [sdf] abort completed
[11701.237567] scsi host3: uas_eh_task_mgmt: ABORT TASK failed (wrong tag 0/256)
[11701.237576] sd 3:0:0:0: [sdf] uas_eh_abort_handler ffff880014e13680 tag 31, inflight: CMD
[11701.253922] sd 3:0:0:0: [sdf] abort completed
[11701.253936] scsi host3: uas_eh_task_mgmt: ABORT TASK failed (wrong tag 0/256)
[11701.253956] sd 3:0:0:0: uas_eh_device_reset_handler
[11704.252182] scsi host3: uas_eh_task_mgmt: LOGICAL UNIT RESET timed out
[11704.252196] scsi host3: uas_eh_bus_reset_handler start
[11704.252443] usb 5-6: stat urb: killed, stream 0
[11704.358882] usb 5-6: reset high-speed USB device number 3 using ehci-pci
[11704.483206] scsi host3: uas_eh_bus_reset_handler success
Strange enough, the drive is listed by lsusb command as a 2TB but I don't think this is related to the problem (as the OS sees the 3 TB). This is the lsusb output:
Bus 001 Device 003: ID 0bc2:3312 Seagate RSS LLC SRD00F2 [Expansion Desktop Drive 2TB]
I have tried the drive on other PCs and it works flawlessly. Also tried booting Windows 8 on the same PC I have Arch installed in, and in Windows it also works perfect. I have tried using ext2 and NTFS filesystems. Tried also changing the USB cable without success. And right now I'm out of ideas. Any suggestions?
Last edited by doragasu (2014-07-03 11:06:25)

looks like it could be the UAS module , check https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=183190

How do I automatically spin down the hard drive to save power?

I have searched for this in the wiki and the forums, so if I've missed something, please point it out to me, but is there a way to have Arch automatically spin down hard drives and/or suspend the machine to ram to save power? I'm not really interested in the full suspend to disk because I don't think my BIOS will do a wake on lan, and I'm trying to run a home server here.
Anyway, I'm just looking for ways to save on my electricity usage. Any ideas?

If the HD is just used for storage, hdparm is your friend. with hdparm -S you can set the timeout until the disk spins down.
If its a system disk hdparm will work too, but the HD will spin up after 2 secs (or less, depending on your HD) again because of the OS accessing the disk (logs, journal etc). Laptop-mode-tools works very well on laptops because it automatically sets the journal-rewrite time, file-write-cache size and the time when new data gets written to the disk. If you are not reading anything or anything thats not in the cache, it works very well - but thats on laptops. I tried using laptop-mode-tools on my desktop, but without luck (yes, it detected that i wasnt using a laptop).
You could try using cpudyn with the cpu-idling stuff disabled (option -i 0). I know it has a feature that spins down a specific HD after a certain amount of time. But i don't know for sure if cpudyn automatically remounts the HD, so that it caches all the write activity (like laptop-mode-tools).
Good luck.

C30: Booting from external USB hard drive

I carry my OS on an external portable USB drive, and then make use of whatever hardware is available where I visit.
I recently attempted to boot a Lenovo C30 Thinkstation with this external drive, and was unable to do so. In looking at the BIOS settings, there is no option to boot from USB (other than floppy(?!?) or memory stick).
Is it possible to boot from an external USB hard drive, and if not, why?
jerry

The boot sequence section of our setup menus has been troublesome to say the least (at least through the development phase). There are various reasons why it is the way it is now....from spec requirements to customer requirements. So long story short it really needs to be this way, even though situations like the one you encoutered is inconvenient.
The USB issue is actually done for security reasons. For example, many large customers don't want users to have the ability to just walk up and plug in a USB device and allow the system to detect that and attempt to boot to it right away as it is a risk to their image/security. For this reason, USB devices don't automatically get added to the boot order, and must be added throught he setup menu if needed.

WRT160NL: Automatic spin-down of external USB hard disks?

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