Very Large Internal Hard Disk, over 4TB

[free30]

Is the PUIS feature (power up in standby) enabled on your hard drive (I wondered if this was an issue in a past thread concerning disk initialisation problems: see here)?
The PUIS feature is available on Seagate Ironwolf drives. It is easy to check by running the following from the command line:

hdparm -I /dev/sdb | grep "Power-Up In Standby"

You will get a asterisk returned against the feature if it is enabled. The above assumes the drive in question is 'sdb'; you may need to install the hdparm package. If PUIS is the cause of the problem is there a Seagate utility available to disable it? There is another article here. According to that thread, It should be possible to make the disk spin up with the following command:

sg_sat_set_features --feature=7 /dev/sdX

This command should be available if you install the sg3_utils package. If it does work it should be easy to run the command as a startup script.
Hope this helps. I may be barking up the wrong tree, of course!

Guess this is a no.......can't see an asterisk
Not sure...

Thanks though

 

[free30]

hdparm -I /dev/sdb

command gave this.

 

[MontysEvilTwin]

Not PUIS then.

 

[Black Hole]

Maybe if settop can be delayed from starting at boot. @af123: is it possible to knock up a package (eg delay-startup) which takes a user preset parameter in milliseconds and holds off bootup for that time?

 

[free30]

Maybe if settop can be delayed from starting at boot. @af123: is it possible to knock up a package (eg delay-startup) which takes a user preset parameter in milliseconds and holds off bootup for that time?

The problem of the disk not initiating was there before the 'vgibdisk' package. So if thats the package you mean I presume it will not work. Thanks though

 

[Black Hole]

No, that's not what I mean. The suggestion is to cause the Humax firmware to delay boot until the disk has had a chance to power up properly. vgibdisk changes how the Humax firmware interacts with the disk operationally.

 

[af123]

Maybe if settop can be delayed from starting at boot. @af123: is it possible to knock up a package (eg delay-startup) which takes a user preset parameter in milliseconds and holds off bootup for that time?

Yes but it wouldn't help since settop is what actually initialises the disk. Before that runs, the disk doesn't even have power.

 

[Black Hole]

Before settop runs, the disk doesn't even have power.

Oh.

You mean the disk isn't simply wired to the main (non-standby) supply? Weird.

 

[prpr]

You mean the disk isn't simply wired to the main (non-standby) supply? Weird.

No. Why do you think maintenance mode has to start up the Humax software and then shut it down again?
The answer should now be obvious.

 

[Black Hole]

No. Why do you think maintenance mode has to start up the Humax software and then shut it down again?

Why do you think I knew that it does?

The answer should now be obvious.

Why Humax designed it to do that is not obvious. What benefit is there in not powering the HDD with the main (non-standby) power rail? That's the point, that's what's weird.