USB hard drive sleeps and disappears in Ubuntu

Question

I have very small ARM computer with Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty) running as a backup and media server for my house.

I have attached a new "WD My Passport" 750GB USB drive to it. The drive is recognized and I can mount it and read/write files fine.

After several minutes, the drive goes to sleep, even if I was in the middle of writing a backup to it. I can force it to start again with sdparm, but it needs to not shut itself down while it's being written to in the first place.

I have tried this command to disable the standby state but it doesn't work:

root@Plug:~# sdparm --clear STANDBY -6 /dev/sdb
    /dev/sdb: WD        My Passport 0730  1008
change_mode_page: failed setting page: Power condition

I have also been told to change /sys/block/sdb/device/allow_restart from 0 to 1, but no such file exists and one cannot be written there.

The hardware itself is fine, if I plug it into a Windows computer, it will not sleep while in use.

Is there anything else I can try to make this drive workable in Linux?

Answer 1

I believe the issue was insufficient power being provided by the onboard USB host of my plug computer. The drive has yet to power itself down while in use and connected to a powered USB hub.