USB Power shutdown method? And Hard drives?

Hi all,

I have just noticed something…

I am using a Seagate 8 TB Backup Plus Hub USB 3.0 HDD Connected directly to the usb ports.

When using this on my pc, if it is not accessed in a while, or i turn the pc off it quietly goes into a sleep mode where the light blinks and it spins down.

On the N2 As soon as i suspend it or shut down, I get a loud CLUNK! from the drive as if power is being directly pulled, does not sound good for the drive.

Ive enabled keep usb power option in config file, but then it just spins forever and never goes to sleep?

Anything can be done about this?

Firs, download Seagate disk utility with which you can change sleep/spin down time directly in disk’s firmware. Then it will go to sleep at set time on any OS no matter if it’s powered.
I do this for all my USB disks and set time to 10min.
If you cannot for any reason set this in disk’s firmware, then you can set the spin down interval in CoreElec via autostart.sh.
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Oh yes ive tried the seagate utility in the past, but as soon as power is lost to the drive it reverts back to its original setting, not sure if its supposed to but that does seem rather pointless.

Ill try it again, will also take a look at the other option thank you.

Cant find the utility and dont have time to take a PHD in what the hell lol

???
https://www.seagate.com/gb/en/support/downloads/item/drive-settings-master-dl/
“Software to allow the user to change the sleep time, toggle the lights and run drive diagnostics on a Windows computer.”

Tried that one, does not find the drive…

Just an update on this. I managed to change the sleep time with Seagate dashboard. But the drive must be in its original Caddy. Otherwise it’s recognised bit no options can be set.

This is now working 100%. Shuts down after 15 mins every single time. Unlike the hdparam thing where it wasb50-50.

I can now just leave everything on. Cool.

I got tired of hearing my hdd go “clunk” everytime I shut the N2 down and finally figured out how to safetly remove it before shutting down. Simply stop playing a video or whatever and go to settings-files and scroll down to the hdd then push the hamburger button-“safely remove drive” will popup. Push “ok”, the drive will disappear and wait about 15 seconds then the N2 can be safely shut down. Hope this helps someone.

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Is it possible for the devs to put this option in before a shutdown, so that is disconnects the drive before powering off?

Not sure how this would work with standby?

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Ridiculous when you think of the amount of data on them.

Yes, Kodi does not shutdown hard disks safely before shutting down, or rebooting.

To be on the safe side I always use “Remove safely” (from context menu after long press on the drive icon) and wait 5 seconds after that to shut down or reboot my N2.
Used the same method on all my previous boxes and never had any file corruption on my hard drives…

Not helpful when CE is updating and and the HD goes CLUNK when it reboots lol

CE does not reboot automatically after updating if you don’t let it, to give you ample time to remove safely all your USB drives :wink:

Ah yeah thats true, but if i unplug the hdd it still goes clunk lol

I really don’t see why hdds can’t be automatically shut down before Coreelec turns off like win10 does? Oh well, it’s really not that hard to do before quitting-just 1 or 2 more remote button presses.

That would be great improvement, but according https://github.com/xbmc/xbmc/blob/aa39210197323230c1c2ab086a6f2a18f39daf9a/xbmc/storage/MediaManager.cpp Eject(mountpath) would need to be called before shutdown/poweroff.

But there must be some decision making whats removable disc (ie sdX or such).

I think its not too hard implement it only for AML (CE), but in optimal way (not workaround) this should be handled within Kodi itself.

shutdown.sh bash script is called on shutdown: https://wiki.libreelec.tv/autostart.sh
It should be easy to write a script to unmount all devices mounted under /media.

For a start: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/19751624/how-to-unmount-all-usb-pen-drive-from-ubuntu-with-bash-script-or-terminal

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thats nice and easy option there, thanks. I will add umount commands for installations using USB HDD for /storage (as I think USB flashdrives are just fine).

Not sure if HDD shouldnt be handled also for restarts though…

Can you make such a “Shutdown.sh” for us that are not at home with Linux ?

Run this two commands in ssh console and check if reboot or powering off unmounts usb disks.

wget -O /storage/.config/shutdown.sh https://pastebin.com/raw/ypmbcrEu
dos2unix /storage/.config/shutdown.sh
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