Hacking USB Drives going to sleep

[Golfman560]

OR we could just stop it from downspinning by having the Wii access it at least once every 5 minutes.

 

[manias]

OR we could just stop it from downspinning by having the Wii access it at least once every 5 minutes.

yeah that's what I meant with the touch thingy

touch = create empty file in linux
but reading should also be fine i think?

 

[knuttan]

I opened up my WD 1TB Essential, and connected the HDD to my SATA controller. Accessing it with hdparm -I gave me the following: Standby timer values: spec'd by Standard, with device specific minimum

Tried turning off the standby timer with:

hdparm -S0 /dev/hda

Got a confirmation that i was successful. However, the -I parameter still gives me: Standby timer values: spec'd by Standard, with device specific minimum

Popped the HDD back in the enclosure and fired up Super Mario Galaxy. Started a new game; after about 10 minutes, it froze

Read somewhere that drives with a specific minimum standby timer ignores lower timer settings; that is probably what's happening here.

The HDD model is WD10EAVS

 

[lenitao]

I had this problem with my Maxtor Basics 500GB drive. By default it would go into sleep mode after 15 minutes. So if i decided to pause for 15+ minutes it would just freeze at the next loading part in game.

I was able to fix this using a tool called "Maxtor Manager" which can be found here:
http://www.seagate.com/ww/v/index.jsp?loca...000f5ee0a0aRCRD

I know it says it's for OneTouch blabla, but it worked fine with my Maxtor Basics drive anyway. Just change sleep to "Never" i settings.
Most drives out there probably have some similar tools, just look it up.

OMG, thanks a lot, it works! : )

 

[AdamBrunt]

I'm going to be receiving a Western Digital Passport Essentials today. I've heard it has the spindown problem, too. However, there's no utility from Western Digital to change the spindown feature.

What, wait. All the comments I have read on here from people with WD Passport drives (320GB) say they haven't had a single problem ? I hope that's right as I am waiting on a delivery of one.

 

[wiiNinja]

People who failed using "hdparm", try "sdparm" instead.

In Linux/Unix, "hd" is associated with IDE and "sd" is associated with SCSI. I know that USB drives are used in Linux as "sd" (example /dev/sda, /dev/sdb, etc...)

 

[Golfman560]

Read somewhere that drives with a specific minimum standby timer ignores lower timer settings; that is probably what's happening here.

Then give it a higher value than the set time. Like the largest nubmer possible.

 

[Legah]

I opened my freecom 400gb and connected it to my computer

Then I ran this command : hdparm -B 255 hdd to disable Power Management

C:\Windows\System32>hdparm -B 255 hdd

hdd:
setting Advanced Power Management level to disabled
HDIO_DRIVE_CMD failed: Input/output error
which didn't work, so I tried the following:
QUOTEC:\Windows\System32>hdparm -S 0 hdd

hdd:
setting standby to 0 (off)

No error messages, gonna turn of the computer and reconnect the drive to my wii and take a stab at running mario galaxy, I'll be back with the results in 10-15 minutes

::update::
Mario Galaxy still crashes... but from what I could see the drive didn't change power mode.. hmm, must be something else acting up then.. gahh..

I'm going to reformat my drive to ntfs and run a complete chkdsk to search for bad sectors, don't think that's the problem, but I've got nothing else to do..

 

[hdhacker]

I opened up my WD 1TB Essential, and connected the HDD to my SATA controller. Accessing it with hdparm -I gave me the following: Standby timer values: spec'd by Standard, with device specific minimum

Tried turning off the standby timer with:

hdparm -S0 /dev/hda

Got a confirmation that i was successful. However, the -I parameter still gives me: Standby timer values: spec'd by Standard, with device specific minimum

Popped the HDD back in the enclosure and fired up Super Mario Galaxy. Started a new game; after about 10 minutes, it froze

Read somewhere that drives with a specific minimum standby timer ignores lower timer settings; that is probably what's happening here.

The HDD model is WD10EAVS

Try setting the "-K" switch to 1.

 

[Sanf1]

Today i received my new Western Digital My Passport Essential 320GB.
I played Mariokart Wii and paused it for more than 30 minutes.

After the break I played the game without problems, no freezing game,no standby or sleeping harddisk.

 

[knuttan]

Read somewhere that drives with a specific minimum standby timer ignores lower timer settings; that is probably what's happening here.

Then give it a higher value than the set time. Like the largest nubmer possible.

Why, thank you for that suggestion

Ran the command:

hdparm -S251 /dev/hda

This sets the standby timer to 5 1/2 hours, and is the highest possible. I really shouldn't be having gaming sessions that long, so it should be plenty! Been playing Galaxy for about an hour now and no crashes so far! Fingers crossed...

Will try the -K switch if it crashes again.

 

[icebrg5]

Well call me a dummy.

My drive has the sleep feature and i figured that it had to be non wbfs format in order to change it.So i formatted my drive that had about 30 games on it so i could change the sleep feature.Well after adding a few games back onto it i opened up the maxtor manager and guess what i could still change it.


Also once its been formatted to wbfs maxtor manager doesnt read it right.

It now shows the drive in japanese lang and shows free space of only 1.8gb free when there should be 232gb free

 

[Golfman560]

Ran the command:

hdparm -S251 /dev/hda

This sets the standby timer to 5 1/2 hours, and is the highest possible. I really shouldn't be having gaming sessions that long, so it should be plenty! Been playing Galaxy for about an hour now and no crashes so far! Fingers crossed...

You said this was on a 1TB WD My Book Essential? How'd you get the case open?

I want to find out if it was easy to open so that I don't break it.


icpmattj Thats because almost all external hard drives have a hidden partition that stores data which shouldn't be deleted, or they have a separate controller to do it.

 

[Legah]

Ran the command:

hdparm -S251 /dev/hda

This sets the standby timer to 5 1/2 hours, and is the highest possible. I really shouldn't be having gaming sessions that long, so it should be plenty! Been playing Galaxy for about an hour now and no crashes so far! Fingers crossed...

This is just weird, I made the same setting as you did on my drive but when playing Galaxy I get stuck a couple of minutes in to the game, it's just when the 'ufo' is above the castle in the very beginning of the game. All of a sudden the game freezes but the HD is still spinning... Must be something else wrong with this.

And I'm guessing you're running the PAL version of Galaxy aren't you? That's what I'm running.

 

[icebrg5]

Ran the command:

hdparm -S251 /dev/hda

This sets the standby timer to 5 1/2 hours, and is the highest possible. I really shouldn't be having gaming sessions that long, so it should be plenty! Been playing Galaxy for about an hour now and no crashes so far! Fingers crossed...

You said this was on a 1TB WD My Book Essential? How'd you get the case open?

I want to find out if it was easy to open so that I don't break it.


icpmattj Thats because almost all external hard drives have a hidden partition that stores data which shouldn't be deleted, or they have a separate controller to do it.

Yeah i don't know why i didnt try it first before erasing 40 gbs worth of games.Oh well lesson learned.

Anywhere heres a pic of how my drive is seen by maxtor manager when its formatted to wbfs.
My drive is maxtor one touch 4 mini 250gb.Maxtor manager only shows 1.8gb free no matter how much is really there.

 

[SonyUSA]

Here is my fix specifically for WD Passport but it may work with many other drives too!

http://gbatemp.net/index.php?showtopic=146789

enjoy guys!

 

[rudedoggx]

Oops, wrong thread.

 

[WiiBadger28]

I had this problem with my Maxtor Basics 500GB drive. By default it would go into sleep mode after 15 minutes. So if i decided to pause for 15+ minutes it would just freeze at the next loading part in game.

I was able to fix this using a tool called "Maxtor Manager" which can be found here:
http://www.seagate.com/ww/v/index.jsp?loca...000f5ee0a0aRCRD

I know it says it's for OneTouch blabla, but it worked fine with my Maxtor Basics drive anyway. Just change sleep to "Never" i settings.
Most drives out there probably have some similar tools, just look it up.

Just wanted to thank you for the excellent advice, and let know other people that 1TB Maxtor Basics is supported too (as expected).
And, you don't need to reformat or change anything if (like in my case) you already have some 100+ games installed on the hd and just a WBFS partition extended to the full capacity of the hd. The Maxtor Manager recognizes the disk, sees a partition (doesn't recognize the type, of course) and let you change power settings on-the-fly. It stores the data where you can't accidentally delete anything useful.

 

[erolz]

read my topic here and post all test results please:
http://gbatemp.net/index.php?showtopic=153134