Hello everyone,

I've a Dell 6800 that we run ESX Server 3.0 on (OS is a stripped down version of Debian 3.0), and we use it as a virtual machine server. As part of that, I run bi-monthly backups of the VMs using the built in tools vmware comes equipped with, and the backups were going to a single 500 gb ATA Seagate hard disk in a Bytecc encloser which in turn plugged into the Dell through the USB ports. This worked fine until we exceeded 500 GBs in the backup. We then switched to a SeaGate FreeAgent Pro 750 Gb hard disk. This bad boy plugs in through the same USB port used by the previous hard disk.

I plugged it in, and ran fdisk -l and didn't see the drive. I then checked in /proc/bus/usb/devices, and could see it just fine there. I then rebooted the Dell, and when it came back up, I ran Fdisk -l, saw the disk fine. Since it was late in the day, I put off partiioning it until the following morning. Partiioning it was uneventful, and I just made one big partition filling the entire disk. I mounted it to the backup file, and began running some tests. I backed up a test machine to it, ran fine. Then I went to run a second test. At this point I began running into problems, and began receieving a series of access denied messages, that the file was set to read only. I checked the permissions for the directory, and they were set to 0755. I also checked the subdirectory, and they were set to 0755 as well. But any folder that went into that drive was set to 600. Any attempt at changing the permissions (and I'm doing this as root) failed. I plugged in the old drive, and everything works fine. Put the FreeAgent back in, and it gives me fits,

I check the umask for root, and it's set for 0022. The only thing I can think of is that this external drive is rather new and jsut doesn't like Linux yet.

Any ideas what I'm running into here?

Rich

This is a known problem with the Seagate FreeAgent drives and Linux in general. The FreeAgent drives are set to spin-down the drive after 15 minutes of inactivity. The problem is that the drive does not spin back up when you try to read/write from the drive; which is where the access denied/read-only error messages come from.

There's a fix available here, but I couldn't get it to work on my system (Mepis 6.5); though that is probably due to my own inexperience and not the system itself.

If you get the fix in the link above to work, please let me know! :-P


sleepy

Hi,

I want to buy one of these drives so I was looking for information to see if it works in Linux.

One of the solutions I found for your problem:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...size=10&Page=3

solution for linux spindown
Pros: n/a
Cons: n/a
Other Thoughts: for the user who is using the drive on linux who couldn't find a solution for the spindown problem, here is the solution: make sure you have the sdparm package installed. as root, do : # sdparm -al /dev/sdd /dev/sdd: Seagate FreeAgentDesktop 100D Direct access device specific parameters: WP=0 DPOFUA=0 Power condition [po] mode page: IDLE 0 [cha: n, def: 0, sav: 0] Idle timer active STANDBY 1 [cha: y, def: 1, sav: 1] Standby timer active ICT 0 [cha: n, def: 0, sav: 0] Idle condition timer (100 ms) SCT 9000 [cha: y, def:9000, sav:9000] Standby condition timer (100 ms) # sdparm --clear STANDBY -6 /dev/sdd /dev/sdd: Seagate FreeAgentDesktop 100D # sdparm -al /dev/sdd /dev/sdd: Seagate FreeAgentDesktop 100D Direct access device specific parameters: WP=0 DPOFUA=0 Power condition [po] mode page: IDLE 0 [cha: n, def: 0, sav: 0] Idle timer active STANDBY 0 [cha: n, def: 1, sav

Here you will find info about sdparm:
http://sg.torque.net/sg/sdparm.html

I haven't bought the disk yet, so I was unable to test anything, but if sdparm solves it (or if you find any other fix), can you let me know?
I'd love to buy that drive but only if it works in Linux.

Thanks for posting this info guys. let me beat on it, and see what happens.

Thanks for the info, conqueror! I put it in the code tags just to clean it up a bit. I too have a FreeAgent drive, and will give this fix a shot when I get a chance...probably this weekend.


sleepy

Hello again,

I am sorry but what I wrote was not too clear. I just copied and pasted what I read on another thread.
But looking at the sdparm command and how to use it, I think the following is the right thing to do:

Just run:
# sdparm -al /dev/sdd
# sdparm --clear STANDBY -6 /dev/sdd
# sdparm -al /dev/sdd

(The rest was just an example of the output that you will receive)

The first command lists the current (default) parameters for the device.
The second is the one that modifies the current parameters.
The third one shows the new values after the modification.

Notice the difference between the first command and the third one.
See below: I made the commands bold
Do you see STANDBY 1 before the change and then STANDBY 0 after it? I guess that's what you want to achieve.
I hope it works...


# sdparm -al /dev/sdd

/dev/sdd: Seagate FreeAgentDesktop 100D
Direct access device specific parameters: WP=0 DPOFUA=0
Power condition [po]
mode page: IDLE 0 [cha: n, def: 0, sav: 0]
Idle timer active STANDBY 1 [cha: y, def: 1, sav: 1]
Standby timer active ICT 0 [cha: n, def: 0, sav: 0]
Idle condition timer (100 ms) SCT 9000 [cha: y, def:9000, sav:9000]
Standby condition timer (100 ms)

# sdparm --clear STANDBY -6 /dev/sdd

/dev/sdd: Seagate FreeAgentDesktop 100D


# sdparm -al /dev/sdd

/dev/sdd: Seagate FreeAgentDesktop 100D
Direct access device specific parameters: WP=0 DPOFUA=0
Power condition [po]
mode page: IDLE 0 [cha: n, def: 0, sav: 0]
Idle timer active STANDBY 0 [cha: n, def: 1, sav

Thanks for clarifying that even more conqueror...it's much clearer now. I'm anxious to try this on my FreeAgent at home...c'mon 5pm!


sleepy

Hi Guys,

Hey, that did it. I had to download and install SDPARM, but it's working as I want it to.

Thanks for the assist everyone.

Rich

That's good news.
SleepyEDB, please let us know if it worked for you too.

I will. The weekend got away from me (studying for these master's classes is teh suck! ) but I'll get it done as soon as I can.


sleepy

Wonderful jobs you guys. I installed ubuntu 7.10 and have a usb Freeagent 500Gb myself - had the same power down problem as you described. Mine was assigned as sdb1. Question, though why -6? Looking at the man manual - seems like clearing down byte 6 to 0.

Either way, that is fascinating! Hell, this is a problem in windows in that when it powers down it causes a lag when access other drives by insisting on waking up even when accessing other drives.

STANDBY 0 [cha: n, def: 1, sav: 0] Standby timer active

I assume you'd have to put this in your startup script rather than do this after every reboot.

Until I saw this - I was thinking of using the cron to do an "ls" cmd to the drive every 12 minutes.

http://sg.torque.net/sg/sdparm.html
Says:

-6: use 6 byte cdbs for MODE SENSE and MODE SELECT commands for getting and setting mode pages. The default action is to use the 10 byte cdb variants.

(Maybe someone here can explain it in plain English).

Hi All,

I am pretty new to Linux Desktop. I just downloaded Ubuntu 7.10 and was very excited to see the desktop demonstration from the CD. But, then I noticed that it was not that easy to simply install it on my 500GB FreeAgent. Since I already have some files on this drive, I cannot format it, so I need to create a partition on it (maybe 10-20GB) and install Ubuntu there. I have no space left on my laptop's hard drive.

I ran the install on Ubuntu's desktop after I booted my laptop from the CD . I noticed that the Ubuntu setup shows something like "?k?" in front of the drive letter designated for the FreeAgent and when I want to create partition on it it says it cannot do so.

Any help would be much appreciated. I would really like to install this version of Linux.

Thanks in advance.