keeping USB disk awake (SOLVED--kind of)

[Sherman Grunewagon]

On Fri, Apr 12, 2013 at 4:27 PM, Bill Davidsen wrote:
> Sherman Grunewagon wrote:
> > On Wed Apr 10, 2013 at 11:41 AM, Bill Davidsen wrote:
> >> Sherman Grunewagon wrote:
> >>> On Tue Apr 9, 2013, at 06:02:08,  pomo wrote:
> >>>> On 09.04.2013 07:38, Sherman Grunewagon wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>>> I have an external SATA disk in a USB-3 / eSATA docking
> >>>>> station. When I connect using eSATA, the disk stays awake. But when I
> >>>>> connect using the USB-3 port, it goes to sleep after a few
> >>>>> minutes. How do I make it work like the eSATA?
> > <snip>
> >
> >>> Other suggestions?
> >>>
> >> Have you tried just disabling spindown? (hdparm -S0 drive)
> > Thanks. I have now, as well as hdparm -B 255 drive.
> > The disk/docking station still suspends after a few minutes.
> > I'm ready to try recompling the kernel with CONFIG_USB_SUSPEND=n
> > But since
> >
> >      for i in /sys/bus/usb/devices/*/power/autosuspend; do echo -1 > $i; done
> >
> > also has no effect, I think it will be a waste of time.
> >
> > I should mention that this is a freshly updated F18 install.
> > Motherboard is a Sabertooth Z77.
> > The docking station is a StarTech,
> > <http://www.startech.com/HDD/Docking/SuperSpeed-USB-3-eSATA-Hard-Drive-Docking-Station-with-Cooling-Fan~SATDOCKU3SEF>
> >
> > and the disk is a SAMSUNG HD103SJ sata drive (1 TB).
> > The motherboard docs don't say anything about USB suspend.
> >
> > Sherman
> >
> At this point, are you sure the kernel is doing it? Assuming hdparm -S reaches
> the drive itself and disables spindown via timeout, something is telling the
> drive to rest, or it is firmware set to sleep regardless. Very odd.

I have since called the manufacturer of the docking station. They confirmed that this
particular dock has the "feature" that it autonomously goes to sleep after 5 minutes of non-use
when connected via USB. That's why nothing I did via the kernel helped. I guess I will have
to ping the two docking stations every 4.9 minutes via a cron job to keep them awake.

What a kludge.  Other suggestions?

Sherman