Re: Stopping USB HDD

[Riza Dindir <riza.dindir%gmail.com@localhost>]

Hello Mark,

On Wed, Aug 25, 2021 at 4:29 AM MJ <mafsys1234%gmail.com@localhost> wrote:
>
>
> On 25/08/2021 1:25 am, Riza Dindir wrote:
> > Hello
> >
> > When I power off the system (with poweroff) the connected USB HDD
> > makes a noise that comes from the heads. A distinct clicking noise.
>
> Does the external USB eventually power down or continue spinning?

The drive still spins. Yesterday i did use shutdown and waited a
minute or so, the drive was still spinning, then used the laptop power
button to power down. I did not hear that clicking noise.

I will not be using poweroff but use shutdown. I think this is the
proper way of stopping the system.

This drive has the main NetBSD OS in it (I will be explaining the
reason for that below). Would that be a problem? I am thinking when
you shutdown, the system will unmount everything and then wait for the
user to reset or power down the system, no matter what. Would that
assumption be correct?

The reason for this setup is this; I have had enough of windows not
being able to update the system for a month or more, will keep windows
until i can use zoom, hangouts or some other video conferencing system
using NetBSD.

As I said, I will be using NetBSD as my main OS. So I have bought a
caddy and a drive. The caddy did run and install the system, then when
it came to booting the system it hangs at the very beginning, when it
displays the mem [memRangeList] (which i think these are memory ranges
in the format "hexNumber-hexNumber") or sometimes after the boot menu,
when the system says "default boot twice, skipping" and starts to go
through memory and provides a spinning gadget in between those
numbers.

I think the caddy has some issues. To save me from some hardware
failure, I had a hdd enclosing (usb 3) sitting around, and popped the
drive in there and started having no problems booting. Although I am
still seeing that mem [0x0000-0x1000 0xaaaa-0xbbbb ...] output (the
numbers are not correct, I made them up, do not remember the exact
numbers), but the system boots normally.

I have also had problems with my radeon on-board screen card (r7 m265,
which is not supported) and acpibat0. I disabled both in the
boot.conf. I also have an atheros ar9565 wireless/bluetooth device,
which is not recognized, but will be using my wired net connection,
which works.

Currently I am using X11 using a vesa driver, and to my surprise it
works nicely. I am using TWM and will stick with it, i configured that
and will be writing some tools for virtual desktops and panels, as an
exercise, if I find the time for it :) But TWM is pleasant for the
moment (I had used it briefly in the past). Graham's twm page
(http://www.custompc.plus.com/twm/twmrc.htm) was and is helpful, and
shows that it can good looking as well :)

>
>
> > I wanted to know if there is a way, when powering off the system, any
> > usb hdd drive that is connected to the system be stopped properly, and
> > the disk heads are parked?
>
> You can look at https://man.netbsd.org/atactl.8 and perhaps do something like this:
>
> 1. Unmount it.
>
> 2. Sleep it.
>
> 3. Power off the system.
>
> You could achieve this with a script.

Yes, I was thinking the same, writing a script for that, in the rc
system (probably). But I'm not sure yet, reading the guide, and the rc
system architecture. The drive might be a scsi drive, or seen as a
scsi drive. I will have to check the dmesg.

>
> Cheers
>
> Mark.
>

Kind Regards,
Riza