Check if USB hard drive is sleeping

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tcpdump

311 posts

Ultimate Geek
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#76453 2-Feb-2011 15:55

Hello,

Is there a way to see if an external USB hard drive is in sleep mode or not?
Distro is Ubuntu (if it matters although it shouldn't).

SMART is not available so that's not an option.
One way would be trying to do an "ls" on the mountpoint and see if it takes two-three seconds to do the listing (meaning that it's in sleep mode) or instantaneous which would show the opposite but I'm not sure after how long the USB drive is going in sleep mode (if it does)

Any thoughts on this?

Thanks.

gzt

18678 posts

Uber Geek
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Lifetime subscriber

#434545 2-Feb-2011 22:41

what motivates the need to check?

tcpdump

311 posts

Ultimate Geek
+1 received by user: 3

#434684 3-Feb-2011 10:17

The hard drives (two of them) are attached to my media centre pc and for the most of the time they should be sleeping as they are not being used.

gzt

18678 posts

Uber Geek
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#434717 3-Feb-2011 11:03

hdparm -C ?

farcus

1626 posts

Uber Geek
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#434720 3-Feb-2011 11:11

just a stab in the dark but anything here . . .

/var/logs/messages

Not familiar with Ubuntu but think it would probably use same structure as opensuse.

gzt

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Uber Geek
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#436163 7-Feb-2011 10:41

did any of that work?

tcpdump

311 posts

Ultimate Geek
+1 received by user: 3

#436343 7-Feb-2011 15:47

Hello,

Sorry about the delay. Indeed 'hdparm -C' did the trick. Even more, 'hdparm -y' sends the hard drive to sleep and it will be automatically up when something tries to access data on that hard drive.

Many thanks.