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OS/2 - Technical => Hardware => Topic started by: Ben on 2010.11.18, 18:24:53

Title: USB hardrive power-down and JFS crashes
Post by: Ben on 2010.11.18, 18:24:53
The title really says it all.

My little USB hardrive works great. But when it goes idle, it powers down. If I then try to access it through an app, (like FM/2), JFS traps the system.

If I try to access it first via the commandline it will eventually power up, but inevitably it will still crash the system. This means a long chkdsk for the system on boot and a mega-long chkdsk for my removable drive... the latter owing to no, (or a partial), eject procedure prior to the trap.

Does anyone know of a cure/work-around for this?
Title: Re: USB hardrive power-down and JFS crashes
Post by: DougB on 2010.11.18, 21:12:24
I haven't seen JFS crash because of that, but I do see a severe degradation in performance, if my USB drive powers down, until I turn it off, or disconnect it. The whole system, is almost unusable, whether I try to use the drive, or not. Of course, that causes it to need the CHKDSK when it is reconnected, or powered on. The odd thing is, that I have another USB drive, that powers down, and up again, with no trouble. As it happens, the "bad" drive is used in such a way that it rarely gets the chance to cause the problem, and I just try to make sure that it is never left sitting long enough to decide to power down. I have considered making a small REXX program that will do a simple write to the drive, about once per minute, while it is being used. That should prevent the timeout, but it is extra overhead.

FWIW, I am pretty sure that the drive didn't do that, until I connected it to windows, but I can't be sure about that. Otherwise, the drive (Samsung Story Station 1 TB) works great. The other drive is a Western Digital 640 GB drive in a NexStar enclosure that has both USB, and eSata interfaces. I highly recommend the NexStar enclosure, it works great, but a reboot is required to connect/disconnect, the eSata interface.
Title: Re: USB hardrive power-down and JFS crashes
Post by: Pete on 2010.11.18, 21:13:58
Hi Ben

Sounds like a failure to resume properly from it's powered down idle state.

What causes it to power down? - is it a setting in the usb drive or a setting on the system?

Can you disable the setting?

Regards

Pete
Title: Re: USB hardrive power-down and JFS crashes
Post by: Ben on 2010.11.19, 01:24:00
The hardrive auto-powers down when inactive. I have no control over this whatsoever.

I'm usually transferring large files in the background while I'm doing something else. It simply isn't practical to check back every few minutes and very hard to time it when I have done this. Of course, it goes without saying that I cannot simply watch it do the xfer and wait for it to finish.

As far as I know, (and I know very little about USB devices), there are no settings for the drivers associated with this drive. I simply plug it in, it gets recognized, and I eject it when I'm done... if I can catch it in time that is... else it will crash the system, which is about 90% of the time.

If I just unplug the device it will require a very, time consuming chkdsk and sometimes data is lost; This is unacceptable and makes this dandy little drive, (500g and about half the thickness of a box of cigarettes, easily fitting into any pocket) risky at best, and near useless at worse.
Title: Re: USB hardrive power-down and JFS crashes
Post by: Saijin_Naib on 2010.11.19, 02:05:39
Have you tried this with other drives that are using other filesystems? FAT32, FAT16, HPFS?
Title: Re: USB hardrive power-down and JFS crashes
Post by: Pete on 2010.11.19, 02:24:34
Hi Ben

What make/model is the usb drive? - it currently sounds like 1 I'd want to avoid :-)

The few usb drives I have are all "home built", ie I purchased usb drive cases to wrap around old ide drives, and do not have this problem.

Regards

Pete

Title: Re: USB hardrive power-down and JFS crashes
Post by: Andi on 2010.11.19, 14:21:12
Don't know which JFS version you use, but there are updates available about 3 months ago AFAIR. Maybe you should post your trap screen at the bugtracker at ecomstation or check if there's an open ticket for that.

My 2 1TB 3.5" and the 500GB 2.5" works without problems (latest JFS drivers installed). All are Western Digital here.
Title: Re: USB hardrive power-down and JFS crashes
Post by: Ben on 2010.11.19, 14:29:44
Quote from: Saijin_Naib on 2010.11.19, 02:05:39
Have you tried this with other drives that are using other filesystems? FAT32, FAT16, HPFS?

The only other USB device I have is a camera. I can download off that fine, as long as I pull the cable on it after I'm finished, (as opposed to ejecting it).
Title: Re: USB hardrive power-down and JFS crashes
Post by: Ben on 2010.11.19, 14:31:40
Quote from: Pete on 2010.11.19, 02:24:34
Hi Ben

What make/model is the usb drive? - it currently sounds like 1 I'd want to avoid :-)

The few usb drives I have are all "home built", ie I purchased usb drive cases to wrap around old ide drives, and do not have this problem.

I am using a Seagate FreeAgent Go.
Title: Re: USB hardrive power-down and JFS crashes
Post by: Ben on 2010.11.19, 15:16:37
Quote from: Andi on 2010.11.19, 14:21:12
Don't know which JFS version you use, but there are updates available about 3 months ago AFAIR. Maybe you should post your trap screen at the bugtracker at ecomstation or check if there's an open ticket for that.

I am using eCS 2.0 GA so the JFS drivers have to be current or very close to it. If there are any updates to JFS since then, I am unaware of it. But it is a consideration.

Quote from: Andi on 2010.11.19, 14:21:12
Maybe you should post your trap screen at the bugtracker at ecomstation or check if there's an open ticket for that.

I'll exhaust this avenue first, and if it leads nowhere, then I'll have to seriously consider opening a ticket on it, but for the nonce, I'll continue hunting.

Title: Re: USB hardrive power-down and JFS crashes
Post by: Pete on 2010.11.19, 15:39:53
Hi Ben

I suspect your problem is simply the usb drive itself.

Looking at http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/products/external/freeagent/freeagent_go/ I see the following information:-

"All the little extras.

You don't choose a drive based on these things. But you love them once you have them.

    Power management features save energy"


I suggest you contact Seagate and ask if it is possible to disable the Power management features - maybe from a Windows desktop as hardware manufacturers are very keen on stating "we only support Windows".

Regards

Pete
Title: Re: USB hardrive power-down and JFS crashes
Post by: Pete on 2010.11.19, 15:48:13
Hi Ben

Looks like you should have some disk management (Windows) software supplied with the drive which may let you disable power down when idle.

If that does not work then at least you know not to purchase another 1 of these drives.

Regards

Pete

Title: Re: USB hardrive power-down and JFS crashes
Post by: Blonde Guy on 2010.11.19, 17:39:34
I'm using two 500 GB JFS-formatted USB external drives, an IOMega and a Toshiba. Both of them power down to save power. Neither of them has any problem powering back up, and I haven't had any crash due to this. Performance is pretty good. Both are 2 1/2 inch drives powered by the USB cable.

If eCS crashes with the drive mounted, then the drive is dirty, and there will be a long chkdsk when I next attach the drive.

In some combination of unplug without eject I get a JFS trap, but I don't always get it, and I don't know how to reproduce. Your Seagate is likely to be the same trap, since you are in essence unplugging without eject. If the current JFS maintainer had a recipe for reproducing the trap and a drive, this trap maybe could be fixed.
Title: Re: USB hardrive power-down and JFS crashes
Post by: Ben on 2010.11.19, 18:49:42
Quote from: Pete on 2010.11.19, 15:48:13
Hi Ben

Looks like you should have some disk management (Windows) software supplied with the drive which may let you disable power down when idle.

If that does not work then at least you know not to purchase another 1 of these drives.

Thanks, Pete. The drive came without documentation and without a disk. Though both of this was probably provided on the disk itself, it doesn't matter for I don't have Windows and it was certainly all lost anyway, when I first formatted the disk.

However, the link that you sent me has two great PDFs on this particular, (my), drive that does provide some useful information and it does reference some  Windows software. So I'll hunt around for it and if I can find it, I'll see if I can also find a laptop with Windows on it to run it... right now it appears that that is my only option, but I cannot stand using Windows since it's primary function is so, blatantly obvious, (and has been for many, years). I can say that I have never owned a copy of any version of Windows... and I never will. And while those latter things are irrelevant to the topic, it is important that they be written down.

Of course, I would much, prefer to do this singularly with eCS/OS/2, so I'll keep my ear to the ground for the coming of such a solution.  :D
Title: Re: USB hardrive power-down and JFS crashes
Post by: Ben on 2010.11.19, 19:24:02
Quote from: Blonde Guy on 2010.11.19, 17:39:34
If the current JFS maintainer had a recipe for reproducing the trap and a drive, this trap maybe could be fixed.

Now, that would be close it ideal! *crosses fingers*
Title: Re: USB hardrive power-down and JFS crashes
Post by: DougB on 2010.11.19, 20:06:00
This thread prompted me to investigate this further. It is definitely windows that turned on the desire to spin down the disk drive. I hooked it up to windows again, and went to Control Panel-> Power. The system was set to go to power saving (including disk drives), but there was no obvious special setting for the USB drive (Samsung Story Station 1 TB), so I set the whole system to never power off anything, then disconnected the USB drive. Now, the drive doesn't power down while connected to eCS, so I have to assume that windows set something in the drive to cause the power down.

FWIW, I use my X-10 power control system to turn the drive on, and off, under control of the computer. At 4 AM, the drive is powered on, my daily backup is done, using RSYNC, and the computer powers the drive off again. If I need to use the drive at other times, I have an icon set to turn it on, and another icon set to turn it off. The turn off includes an eject command, and a 60 second timeout before it actually powers the drive off (the timeout seems to be unnecessary, but it is a safety thing, that makes me feel comfortable that all I/O has terminated).
Title: Re: USB hardrive power-down and JFS crashes
Post by: Ben on 2010.11.19, 21:02:17
Quote from: DougB on 2010.11.19, 20:06:00
FWIW, I use my X-10 power control system to turn the drive on, and off, under control of the computer. At 4 AM, the drive is powered on, my daily backup is done, using RSYNC, and the computer powers the drive off again. If I need to use the drive at other times, I have an icon set to turn it on, and another icon set to turn it off. The turn off includes an eject command, and a 60 second timeout before it actually powers the drive off (the timeout seems to be unnecessary, but it is a safety thing, that makes me feel comfortable that all I/O has terminated).

X-10 power control system? Isn't that a device to control outlets around the house?

But reading the first half of your post I recalled that when I first bought the drive i used it to backup a partition on my sister's comp, (Windows), before I ever got to use it. I'm wondering if it didn't have some effect on the settings inside the drive... definitely food for thought there.

Thanks, Doug.
Title: Re: USB hardrive power-down and JFS crashes
Post by: DougB on 2010.11.20, 18:28:12
QuoteX-10 power control system? Isn't that a device to control outlets around the house?

Yes. It controls the outlet where I plug in the USB drive power (it is not powered by the USB port). X-10 is pretty old technology, but it works. You do need to use a device that is designed to be on or off, you can't use one that is designed to dim lamps. There are two reasons why I did it that way 1) to keep the drive from running all of the time. 2) this machine doesn't like having the USB drive attached during boot. When it is powered off, it is still physically attached, but not "visible" to the BIOS.

My USB drive doesn't spin down any more, on it's own, since I "adjusted" it with windows. That solves the immediate problem, but it is really just a work around for the real problem, which I suspect might be in the OS/2 USB support..
Title: Re: USB hardrive power-down and JFS crashes
Post by: Ben on 2010.11.20, 22:01:02
OK.

My drive is powered from the cable so that option is not available for me.

I remember that X-10 technology years ago when they used to make OS/2 software controllers for that line. I damn near did setup my house like that, myself, but it never happened. 8(

But that hardware must be pretty old by now... unless they are still making it?
Title: Re: USB hardrive power-down and JFS crashes
Post by: DougB on 2010.11.20, 23:55:58
QuoteMy drive is powered from the cable so that option is not available for me.

I guess you need to try the windows power setup, to get the disk spin down set to off.

QuoteI remember that X-10 technology years ago when they used to make OS/2 software controllers for that line.

It was a third party that wrote the software for it. It isn't perfect, but it works well enough to use it.

The hardware is still available at: http://www.smarthome.com/_/X10_Compatible/_/23X/land.aspx (http://www.smarthome.com/_/X10_Compatible/_/23X/land.aspx) (and possibly other places). I don't know if they still have the one that is compatible with the HOUSE2 software, which was done by Lone Peak Automation. There are a few versions of that at http://www.os2bbs.com/download/otherapp.html (http://www.os2bbs.com/download/otherapp.html)

The main problem that I have with the controllers is that they are operated over the power lines in the house. That is not working as well as it used to because of the electrical noise produced by the compact florescent light bulbs that I am now using. Still works though, if I am careful to place the controller in the "right place" (experiment).
Title: Re: USB hardrive power-down and JFS crashes
Post by: Ben on 2010.11.22, 22:04:49
Well, I got the use of a Windows machine and turned off all the power down settings.

I gave it try under OS/2 and... same thing. :-\

Next step is to try and find some drive-specific software and see what that can do.