external hard disk does not spin down

[Shiv V]

I've had this issue since an update 1-2 months ago. I can no longer spin down my two external hard disks with "sdparm -6 -f --command=stop". In fact, by feeling the drive itself as I issue this command, I can tell that it spins down momentarily (for less than a second) before spinning up again. Is something polling external hard drives? "killall hald-addon-storage" did not help. I see /usr/lib/gvfs/gvfs-hal-volume-monitor is running, no idea what it does. Could that be it? This was not an issue a 1-2 months ago.

[castlefox (subwayfox)]

What model external hard drives are they???

[Shiv V (svenkata)]

Ah! I can spin down the drive if I stop udev from processing events ...

udevadm control --stop-exec-queue
sdparm -6 -f --command=stop /dev/sdb

Info on my two external drives:
A: Toshiba 10G MK1016GAP / HDD2152 (from an Apple Powerbook G4 circa 2001) in an Oxford Semiconductor Firewire / USB2 enclosure.
B: OWC Mercury Elite Al Pro 500GB with Firewire 400/800 / USB2

[castlefox (subwayfox)]

Do you remember what update you did 1-2 months ago?

Idk how to get the list of updates you have completed but maybe that would be good listing them.

What release of Ubuntu are you on?

[Anton Yakutovich (dr-akulavich)]

The same bug for me after upgrade to Jaunty.
Dell Inspiron 1525 and Transcend StoreJet 25 Classic (TS500GSJ25C).

A trick with udev works fine, thanks.

[Cpp (xcpp)]

Hey, is there a fix available for this yet?
I don't want to have to stop the udev thing every time I boot.

[Jeremy Foshee (jeremyfoshee)]

Hi Shiv,

This bug was reported a while ago and there hasn't been any activity in it recently. We were wondering if this is still an issue? Can you try with the latest development release of Ubuntu? ISO CD images are available from http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/releases/ .

If it remains an issue, could you run the following command from a Terminal (Applications->Accessories->Terminal). It will automatically gather and attach updated debug information to this report.

apport-collect -p linux 361446

Also, if you could test the latest upstream kernel available that would be great. It will allow additional upstream developers to examine the issue. Refer to https://wiki.ubuntu.com/KernelMainlineBuilds . Once you've tested the upstream kernel, please remove the 'needs-upstream-testing' tag. This can be done by clicking on the yellow pencil icon next to the tag located at the bottom of the bug description and deleting the 'needs-upstream-testing' text. Please let us know your results.

Thanks in advance.

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[Jeremy Foshee (jeremyfoshee)]

This bug report was marked as Incomplete and has not had any updated comments for quite some time. As a result this bug is being closed. Please reopen if this is still an issue in the current Ubuntu release http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/download . Also, please be sure to provide any requested information that may have been missing. To reopen the bug, click on the current status under the Status column and change the status back to "New". Thanks.

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