hdd noise on "shutdown -p now"

[octix]

Hi everyone.

I'm a little concerned about a noise my hdd makes when I'm shutting down(shutdown -p now) laptop... Apparently it's powered off too sudden and I'm afraid that this would damage it.

I think windows slows down or stops hdd 1st, and only after that laptop is powered off.

Does anyone have the same problem?

Thank you in advance.

[Djn]

Given that they're supposed to handle power cuts gracefully, I doubt anything done during a software power-off could harm it.

[octix]

It sounds like hardware power-off.
At it's full speed HDD is powered off and I get that "unhealthy" noise.

[trev]

I'm fairly certain that 'shutdown -p' uses the BIOS ACPI function to turn off the machine. There is no safer way and this _is_ how Windows does it :)

[octix]

I guess then, windows does some additional work...

I'll try to play with "atacontrol spindown".

[trev]

I'll try to play with "atacontrol spindown".

It won't work; at the very least, before FreeBSD turns off the power it flushes the disk buffers which will cause your drive to spin up...

[octix]

You're right.. it didn't work.

[octix]

Can I execute a command after disk sync? ataidle -s can put to sleep mode my HDD, but again.. disk sync wakes hdd..

[trev]

I don't believe so.

Really, I don't think you'll do your laptop any harm.

[octix]

OK, i'll try to be not so worried :)

Will continue looking, though.

Thanks for your time!

[octix]

OK. So far I've got some results. Basically I was advised to try to patch "ata-disk.c"

--- ata-disk.c 2008-04-08 05:48:21.000000000 -0500
+++ ata-disk-spindown.c 2009-03-05 21:21:12.000000000 -0600
@@ -57,6 +57,7 @@
static void ad_init(device_t);
static void ad_done(struct ata_request *);
static void ad_describe(device_t dev);
+static void ad_spindown(void *);
static int ad_version(u_int16_t);
static disk_strategy_t ad_strategy;
static disk_ioctl_t ad_ioctl;
@@ -218,6 +219,14 @@

if (atadev->param.support.command2 & ATA_SUPPORT_FLUSHCACHE)
ata_controlcmd(dev, ATA_FLUSHCACHE, 0, 0, 0);
+
+ if (atadev->param.support.command1 & ATA_SUPPORT_STANDBY) {
+ device_printf(dev, "Trying to spindown before poweroff.\n");
+ atadev->spindown = 1;
+ ad_spindown((void *)dev);
+ } else {
+ device_printf(dev, "Cannot spindown before poweroff.\n");
+ }
}

static int

however, this patch seems to work only with "halt" (shutdown -h) but not with "shutdown -p"

don't know yet, why "ad_shutdown" is not called at system's poweroff...

[octix]

Really, I don't think you'll do your laptop any harm.

Perhaps I wasn't able to explain _what_ kind of noise I hear. HDD behaves the same as with "emergency unload", which is dangerous. I mean it's not just arm parking, it's more...