Stopping external disk (Seagate FreeAgentGo).

[iX]

Hi!
I have Kubuntu 11.04 (and 11.10 on another comp).
I am using external disk Seagate FreeAgentGo 120GB with three partitions (FAT32, LUKS-EXT4, TruecryptedNTFS).
With Linux, working well, but one issue:
After succesfull unmount of all partitions, how to stop this HD from spining and turn off the LED?
With m$-windows, I use "Safely remove" and HD umnouts, spins down and after few seconds the LED turns off; ready to unplug.
How to do this with KDE? (or command line).

[OneLine]

hdparm ?

At here the external (usb) HDD has a power switch. The hdparm has many options:



man hdparm

NAME
hdparm - get/set SATA/IDE device parameters

SYNOPSIS
hdparm [options] [device ...]

DESCRIPTION
hdparm provides a command line interface to various kernel interfaces supported by the
Linux SATA/PATA/SAS "libata" subsystem and the older IDE driver subsystem. Many newer
(2008 and later) USB drive enclosures now also support "SAT" (SCSI-ATA Command Translation)
and therefore may also work with hdparm. E.g. recent WD "Passport" models and recent NexS‐tar-3 enclosures. Some options may work correctly only with the latest kernels...

The S option will put the drive into idle (low-power) mode, and also set the standby (spindown) timeout for the drive.

At here:

sudo hdparm -S1 /dev/sde1

[sudo] password for ...:

/dev/sde1:
setting standby to 1 (5 seconds)

[iX]

sudo hdparm -S1 /dev/sdc
This spins down, yes; but the LED remains blinking...

[SecretCode]

I think I recall that with GNOME, device removal using "Eject" switches off the USB hub/device LED, but not with KDE. (My memory might be mistaken here though.)

It would be more convenient if it switched off - so you have visual confirmation of being ready to unplug the device - but I have not had any data issues despite this.

See for example Bug #90097 “USB memory stick light stays on after “safely remove... : Bugs : “hal” package : Ubuntu and Bug #58706 “LED indicator on USB flash disk is not switch off af... : Bugs : “eject” package : Ubuntu - very old bug reports.

Some web sites suggest you should be able to power off a USB port using

echo off | sudo tee /sys/bus/usb/devices/1-3/power/level

(after first having carefully identified which bus and port the specific device is on!)
- but I'm just getting "Invalid argument" when I try that. Likewise with echo suspend ...