keeping USB disk awake (SOLVED--kind of)

[Bill Davidsen]

Sherman Grunewagon wrote:
> 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?
>
>
Docking stations are cheap. Little 4-bay JBOD enclosures are cheap and offer 
USB[23]/eSATA options.

Definite non-feature in your case, may have use to others.

-- 
Bill Davidsen <davidsen at tmr.com>
   We are not out of the woods yet, but we know the direction and have
taken the first step. The steps are many, but finite in number, and if
we persevere we will reach our destination.  -me, 2010