Does libreelec safely remove usb HDD when shutdown

robmcc83 · January 16, 2019 at 9:45 PM

Hi all,

I have a quick question as this is bothering me.

I use libreelec on my raspberry pi3 with a Western digital my passport usb HDD attached to it.

I have noticed when I shutdown the raspberry pi via Kodi I can hear that hard drive making a a clunk noise. I believe this is the heads parking within the hard drive.

It sounds kind of worrying.

My hard drive spins down after a set amount of time by itself if it's not in use so even if I leave it a while when I shutdown libreelec it will spin up the drive before turning the pi off and make the same noise.

Now I'm not sure if this is normal libreelec behaviour but I'm worrying it could be excessively wearing my drive out.

If I plug the hard drive into my windows computer, when I safely remove the device it will spin down the drive before it tells me it's safe to remove the device so on windows I don't get the same clunk noise.

Any info would be appreciated

Thanks

**Da Flex** · January 16, 2019 at 11:24 PM Official Post

There is a spindown command available for hard disks. I think an OS is free to use that command at shutdown or not. It should make no difference, un-mounting the file system is the only important thing.

robmcc83 · January 17, 2019 at 12:31 AM

So if there is a spin down command then what would it be so that I can add it to my shutdown script for my power button.

Thanks

TheWojtek · January 17, 2019 at 12:17 PM

It is a normal hard drive behavior. "Safely remove" in Windows means unmounting the filesystem and cutting power to it. LE unmounts and asks the disk to gracefully shut down when it powers down. Actually your Windows activities may lead to a marginally bigger risk of data corruption, because there is no explicit "park" command issued.

Nevertheless, with the failure rates of contemporary hard drives that's something not worth bothering at all.