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USB hardrive power-down and JFS crashes

Started by Ben, 2010.11.18, 18:24:53

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Ben

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?

DougB

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.

Pete

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

Ben

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.

Saijin_Naib

Have you tried this with other drives that are using other filesystems? FAT32, FAT16, HPFS?

Pete

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


Andi

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.

Ben

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).

Ben

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.

Ben

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.


Pete

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

Pete

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


Blonde Guy

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.
Expert Consulting for OS/2 and eComStation

Ben

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

Ben

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*