USB external hard drive disconnecting

[Reid Rivenburgh]

2008/2/17 Bill Davidsen <davidsen at tmr.com>:
> I apologize for missing this earlier, if this is a FreeAgent or similar
> drive, the drive goes to sleep, the interface shuts down, and comes back
> up with part as USB 1.1 and part as 2.0 (I may be describing this
> poorly, it's been a while). Anyway, help is here, plug in the drive and
> run the attached script (if the mailer doesn't eat it). If the drive
> plugs in as sdf (mine does) run "FixFreeAgent sdf" and the problem
> should go away.

Hi Bill.  Thanks for the information.  I've done a lot of searching
regarding this problem and have since seen that info.  Unfortunately,
I have a Cavalry drive, and sdparm reports things like this:

# sdparm --clear STANDBY -6 /dev/sdd
    /dev/sdd: Generic   External          1.04
change_mode_page: page offset failed: given response length too small,
offset=4 given_len=4 bd_len=0

I assume my brand isn't known by sdparm or doesn't speak the right
protocol or something.  So I've had to resort to workarounds like cron
jobs that fiddle with the disk.

I'm sure your post will help some poor Seagate user, though!

reid