USB HDD power down through par. port: attainable goal?

[hezik]

[edit]
I'm not looking for tools to set the accoustic management for my drive. Accoustig management doesn't spin down the drive[/edit]

I'm the proud owner of an Asus WL-500g and a LaCie 200Gb external USB drive.

After some fiddling i got everything working the way i want it to (including samba, custom FTP, etc). There's only one thing left i can't get to work right: power saving for the external USB hdd.

I've tried the hitatchi feature tool (to no avail), as well as hdparm. Both with the drive connected throught USB and with the drive connected to the IDE controller on my motherboard (LaCie uses a WD 200Gb drive for this device).

I have emailed LaCie about this, and their answer is simple: "to power down the drive, flip the power button". DUH.

Now i'm thinking about the following. The WL-500g has a parralel port, and it's relatively easy to switch stuff on and of using this port. The hard- and software i need for this is no problem; I can get to the point where i can switch on/off the harddrive with a single command on my own. I could also alter the webinterface of the router to make it possible to switch the HD on and/or off using the webinterface.

However, that is not what i want to do. I want it to do that by itself, without me intervening. So that would mean that if the HDD is powered down, and i try to access it, that the WL500g powers it up by itself. I guess this would mean some changes to the samba running on the WL500g, as well as the stupid-ftpd. That, or change the USB mass-storage driver to include this (the latter might be more logical).

Before diving into this, i'd like some thoughts about the attainability of this goal. Also i'd like to check for one last time if there really doesn't already exist a way of doing this.

[Styno]

AFAIK, the APM and acoustic management features of WD drives can be set using a tool. Just get the HDD from the LaCie casing and connect it to a PATA connector on a PC. Then run the Hitachi feature tool or AMSET utility. After that you can mount it in the case again. Done.

[hezik]

AFAIK, the APM and acoustic management features of WD drives can be set using a tool. Just get the HDD from the LaCie casing and connect it to a PATA connector on a PC. Then run the Hitachi feature tool or AMSET utility. After that you can mount it in the case again. Done.

I quote from my own post:

I've tried the hitatchi feature tool (to no avail), as well as hdparm. Both with the

So your suggestion doesn't work. The hitatchi tool does allow me to set the acoustic management features, but not the APM features (if any). The drive doesn't power down because of the acoustic management settings.

Offcourse it would be a better approach to work on the USB mass storage driver, to let it include the normal api for this kind of stuff, so that you can just use hdparm. The question is however if this would be possible at all. I am a senior developer by profession, and willing to spend time on it. However I'm not up for spending hours and hours, then discovering that it just can't be done and have people tell me 'i could have told you it can't be done'. I can imagine there are people here who have a better oversight of the situation.. hence my question..

To be complete, my LaCie contains a 200Gb WD2000JB harddisk from the WD Caviar SE series.

[gwl]

I don't know if this is possible... and maybe it's the hardest solution, but
it should be possible to modify a filesystem module sorce (at the kernel sources), and create a modified fat32 module (for example).
That way, when a request to read/write is received you reset a timer.
when the timer reaches a predefined value (2min, for example), it pulls down the voltage at a pin at the parallel port, and that way, the relay disconnects the external hd). when a new request for a read/write is received then it does the reverse. it resets the counter, and pulls up the voltage at the pin...
(of course you need an small external interface connected to the parallel port... a transistor, a resistor, a diode, and a relay)

then again.. maybe not..

[Styno]

Have you tried the AMSET utility as well?
And this tool: http://support.wdc.com/download/index.asp?swid=17
I also found this in the knowledge base:

Western Digital does not provide software that will change the Acoustic Management settings on Western Digital hard drives.

If you have an Intel chipset based motherboard listed in Answer ID 1004, you can use a program called the Intel Application Accelerator to change the Acoustic Management settings for our hard drives. This utility can be downloaded and installed from Intel's web site.

IMPORTANT: Western Digital does not support third party utilities that change firmware values on our hard drives. It is recommended that any data on your hard drive be backed up before using such software.

USB mass storage devices are seen as SCSI devices under Linux.

[hezik]

Have you tried the AMSET utility as well?

To be honest, I didn't. Now I did, and it doesn't work

And this tool: http://support.wdc.com/download/index.asp?swid=17
I also found this in the knowledge base:
USB mass storage devices are seen as SCSI devices under Linux.

Accoustic management doesnt power down the drive. All it does is slow down seek movements a bit, so your drive doesn't make as much noise. I can set the accoustic management with the Hitatchi feature tool already..

I know that an USB mass storage device is seen as a SCSI device. Still, SCSI devices can be powered down as well..

[Styno]

Accoustic management doesnt power down the drive. All it does is slow down seek movements a bit, so your drive doesn't make as much noise.

Yeah, I know that. It's just that I'm not looking closely to those tools, if they are capable of acoustic management they MIGHT be used for setting the spin-down timers as well. Thats why I mention them. I'll leave it to you to find out if it's possible or not. I just think you should try all easy options first before jumping to a long development project. But hey, it's your life...

Tried the Intel Application Accelerator as well?

[hezik]

Yeah, I know that. It's just that I'm not looking closely to those tools, if they are capable of acoustic management they MIGHT be used for setting the spin-down timers as well. Thats why I mention them. I'll leave it to you to find out if it's possible or not.

Ah, ok... any help is appreciated!

I just think you should try all easy options first before jumping to a long development project. But hey, it's your life...

you're right about that

Tried the Intel Application Accelerator as well?

gonna do that now. I was wondering.. if the power settins are something that is stored on the harddrive, it might be faster just to write my own tool which sets the settings. Only problem is that it's probably impossible to find info about how to do it. Gonna take a look at the hdparm source..

[Tamadite]

This is my experience and my actual suggestion/problem.

I have a Hitachi hard drive I can program via Hitachi software so it can spin down after certain time. This is very useful specially when using it as external.

I have a Western Digital that I would like to use as external hard drive instead. I can not find any software to do the same I did on my Hitachi.

I wonder if it could be possible to send IDE commands via the USB port from the wl500g router to the IDE card drive on the external box to set it on a desire power mode (active, idle, sleep, standby). What I have found so far are the IDE commands:
CODE COMMAND
E3 IDLE
E1 IDLE INMEDIATE
E6 SLEEP
E2 STANDBY
E0 STANDBY INMEDIATE

(more info http://www.teac.de/dspd/downloads/da...DVW28E7939.pdf)