Re: External USB Hard Drive

["Bryan J.Smith" <b.j.smith@ieee.org>]

Tom Dison wrote:
> I bought an 80GB external USB 2.0 Hard Drive ($79 at K-Mart of all 
> places). However, the things gets pretty hot.

If the enclosure lacks a fan, this is quite expected.
I just assembled a MicroATX system and boy did I totally get the cooling 
flow wrong.

> I noticed the drive never seems to spin down (under Windows or Linux). 
> Any ideas?

I don't think there are any standards to USB SBP-2 to command power 
savings, or any such commands are not very universal.
Since the system does not talk directly to the drive, but only to the 
ATA-to-USB logic, you're SOL there.

I need to see if Firewire has such a command.
Firewire has a far larger command-set than USB, including 
device-to-device transfers.
But most of the time these ATA-to-USB/Firewire bridges implement only 
basic SBP-2 interfaces like block transfers.

The limitation is at that bridge, and the host can't do anything about 
it.


-- 
Bryan J. Smith   mailto:b.j.smith@ieee.org
Currently Mobile   Treo 600

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