Not that SATA to USB controller question again

[Ralf Mardorf]

Hi,

I ask the following hardware question every few years on Linux and BSD
mailing lists. Now the situation has changed dramatically.

I am looking for a enclosure with a SATA to USB controller that is
currently easily available on the market with a controller firmware that
never puts anything into any kind of idle sleep standby mode.

If, in addition to Reddit and poor hardware forums, there are also good
hardware forums where such questions are not met with the obligatory
responses, such as where to enable and disable sleep mode for HDDs in
Windows because the controllers are supposedly not responsible for this,
links are welcome.

I'm not looking for FreeBSD etc. workarounds or references to enclosures
that are, at best, only available on the second-hand market.

Among other things, I use FLOSS operating systems (often without auto-
mount and such features) for PCs that are built into tower cases, as
well as iPads, a "smart" Android TV etc. that have little space for a
removable HDD frame/carrier.

I have a whole armada of FANTEC DB-ALU3e enclosures with a controller
firmware that has a special feature, actually it's a missing feature:
during operation, no matter how long the waiting times are, nothing is
ever put into standby/sleep mode.

The drives do not spin up and down every few minutes, nor do they
disappear during the tens of minutes of creating an archive before
writing to disk, which usually results in an input/output error when
attempting to write. Yes, some controllers and drives wake up, are still
mounted and writable, but this is not the rule and is always negated by
other negative characteristics, usually unnecessary spin downs and spin
ups.

This enclosure is the only one I could find that ever met my
requirements, and now it is obviously discontinued.

Can I ask for help finding a new enclosure model? I need several new
items and have almost given up hope. Even my regular dealer gave me a
tip for an enclosure that explicitly advertises that it switches to
sleep mode after 10 minutes of waiting (idle time). I'm perplexed.

I am currently also sending inquiries to manufacturers.

Regards,
Ralf

[Ralf Mardorf]

The first response from one manufacturer:

"all our external boxes have the spindown function set directly in
the FW control chip to 10 minutes" - Axagon Team

[Wojciech Puchar]

> "all our external boxes have the spindown function set directly in
> the FW control chip to 10 minutes" - Axagon Team
>

why not do simple thing like i do

in /etc/rc.local:

/root/bin/dyski.sh &


/root/bin/dyski.sh:

#!/usr/local/bin/bash
while true;do
for x in fi1 data fi2 fi3;do
dd if=/dev/label/$x of=/dev/null bs=4k count=1 >/dev/null 2>/dev/null
done
sleep 120
done

problem solved

[Ralf Mardorf]

In another mailing list, I wrote the following today: "For example, gvfs
can help in some cases, which I would never install, but I could use a
script to prevent a controller from going into standby mode."
Unfortunately, I am highly allergic to workarounds for problems that
should not exist in the first place.

I have 10 enclosures with controllers that do not put anything into
standby/sleep mode, and I prefer to continue buying such enclosures if
they are still available.

Presumably, these no longer exist, but not all of the manufacturers I
wrote to have responded yet.

[Wojciech Puchar]

> In another mailing list, I wrote the following today: "For example, gvfs
> can help in some cases, which I would never install, but I could use a
> script to prevent a controller from going into standby mode."
> Unfortunately, I am highly allergic to workarounds for problems that
> should not exist in the first place.
>
> I have 10 enclosures with controllers that do not put anything into
> standby/sleep mode, and I prefer to continue buying such enclosures if
> they are still available.

that's proper solution but if i already have such enclosure i would prefer
this simple workaround.