was: how to undo powertop actions. now: how to stop hd access every 1.5 seconds?

[dep]

so. the problem was that i have installed a second hard drive, a 2-tb thing formatted ntfs, used for data storage only. after installing it, the hd access led comes on every two seconds. this is not something i need it to do and is something i want it to stop doing, because it cannot be doing me any good and is potentially harming the drive. (the hdparm command listed elsewhere a couple of years ago, btw, does no good.) so there's that problem.

in the course of seeking to solve it, i got powertop, thinking it would tell me what's ticking my drive. it doesn't, but it did suggest that i press "U" to reduce access to "non-input" usb devices, which seemed like an okay idea. but . . .

apparently powertop considers a trackball to be a non-input device. as a result, the trackball goes to sleep after two seconds of idleness and requires a button to be clicked before it will awaken again. this button press also does whatever clicking it when awake would do, so for instance it pastes stuff where i don't want it, goes places i don't want to go, and so on.

so i'm trying to find out how to *undo* that which powertop hath done to my usb!

anybody know?

thanks!

[Snowhog]

Re: how to undo powertop actions

Just restart your KDE session and/or reboot. The changes you make in powertop are not permanent IIRC.

[dep]

was: how to undo powertop actions. now: how to stop hd access every 1.5 seconds?

thanks very much. that worked. but it also makes powertop kinda useless, doesn't it.

so then: the hard drive access led is flashing every 1.5 seconds, ever since i installed a second hard drive. i don't think it's doing anything that needs to be done, and it can't be good for the drive. i cannot find any log or process that is doing it; it's almost as if it's polling the drive, as was the case with cd readers a decade or so ago. actually, i don't know which of the drives is being accessed, but when there was just one this behavior was not exhibited.

any idea what's doing this and how i can make it stop?

[toad]

Re: was: how to undo powertop actions. now: how to stop hd access every 1.5 seconds?

If I remember correctly powertop stops hal. So if you want hal to be online again, you'd type:

sudo service hal start

Could somebody on kubuntu pls confirm?

@ dep

Are there any other services which powertop stopped?

[THHHB]

Re: was: how to undo powertop actions. now: how to stop hd access every 1.5 seconds?

thanks very much. that worked. but it also makes powertop kinda useless, doesn't it.

so then: the hard drive access led is flashing every 1.5 seconds, ever since i installed a second hard drive. i don't think it's doing anything that needs to be done, and it can't be good for the drive. i cannot find any log or process that is doing it; it's almost as if it's polling the drive, as was the case with cd readers a decade or so ago. actually, i don't know which of the drives is being accessed, but when there was just one this behavior was not exhibited.

any idea what's doing this and how i can make it stop?

Is your drive a WD with the IntelliPark feature?

[dep]

Re: how to stop hd access every 1.5 seconds?

no, it's a seagate barracuda. and the flashing every 1.5 seconds began with its installation. it's formatted ntfs, so there's no journal for linux to be tending. it's not unlike the old days, when the led flashed on every few seconds on the cd reader. i'm kinda eager to know what is causing it, whether it is necessary, and how it can be stopped.

[dibl]

Re: how to stop hd access every 1.5 seconds?

it's formatted ntfs, so there's no journal for linux to be tending.

Huh? You installed Linux on a NTFS filesystem, and you're wondering why it's not performing well? Who said that was a good idea?