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I just bought a new 320GB Seagate 'Freeagent' external USB hard drive & it's all nice & peachy - except for it's auto-off feature. The drive spins down after a certain amount of time idle & this confuses/hangs my music playing software (Amarok) when I try to add new tracks to the playlist (because the drive is off!). So does anybody know of a way to disable this auto-off feature? Without voiding the 5-year warranty on the drive, of course...
Install the FreeAgent tool that came with the drive, and you can set sleep interval in there to "never"
Oh, was there a disk in the box? I'll ahve to dig that out! I bet the software only works in Windows though...
Edit: nope, no disk in the box. Where is the tool meant to be?
Was there anything on the drive when you got it? Or did you format or similar before you used it?
I formatted the drive when I got it (NTFS ain't much use under Linux) but I made a copy of what was on it - all there is is a PDF that lays out the warranty conditions & System Volume Information. Is this fabled software perhaps only present on the Freeagent Pro drives?
`hdparm -Z /dev/sdXX' <-- I thought that would have been the obvious first look for a Linux user.
I was avoiding hdparm just in case it would void the warranty to alter the hardware parameters of the drive through a third-party application (e.g. anything other than Seagate's own tools).Quote:
Originally Posted by aidanjt
Anyway, I just tried hdparm -Z & it failed with 'Invalid argument'.
Edit: got it - the Freeagent Tools only come on the Pro drives & Seagate don't link to the software on any of their publically-accessible webpages - I happenned across a link via some searching though. Thanks for the tips guys/gals, I've now got it set to never spin down.