The Western Digital Passport external drive can be unmount normally. The issue is that, even unmounted it is still spinning and the led light is on.
I read a lot regarding this problem in several forums and the previous solution was to manually stop the HDD with sdparm like I mentioned above.
My “new” problem is, since I upgrade to OpenSuse 11.2, the HDD does not spin down anymore with sdparm (actually it does for less than a second and mediately start again).
I know that Ubuntu users have an extra problem with the udev rules (60-persistent-storage.rules), but this rule is absent in OpenSuse.
I just notice that my USB devices are not automatically mounted after the upgrade from OpenSuse 11.1 to 11.2. Now I must click into the device on dolphin or in the device manager to get it mounted. Is this related to the issue I’m having to stop the HDD?
I had my share of “googling” this issue. By the way it is not for the first time it happened to me. I had a Fedora 11 box with the same problem and the only solution was to change to Opensuse 11.1. I guess that the problem is due to the “improvements” in both distros.
I have another external USB HD, it is actually a internal HD in a case, that shutdowns down nicely with the command eject. Does your WD Elements 500 has an external power or it is powered via usb? Maybe only the usb powered HDD are affected.
Do you unmount manually via the terminal or using the eject button on KDE?
Thanks for the attention, I guess that the old saying is always true. “Why upgrade when things work!”
It has it’s own power
It spins down even when mounted. I don’t have to do anything. I never unmount/eject or anything. It’s plugged in permanently. It is visible in /media and has an entry in ‘Places’. It mounts when clicked in ‘Places’ and takes a good few seconds to spin to life. Then it’s fine and speedy.
But leave it a while doing nothing and it spins down, so when you want it again it will take a few seconds again.
That is exactly what I’m doing now. I unmount/sync and then wait for 10 min until it spins down by itself. It is annoying to wait such a long time to remove the HDD but I think it is better than damaging it by removing while it is still spinning (The noise I hear when I do that cannot be good!).
Thanks again. Maybe in a near future, when more people start using Opensuse 11.2, someone comes up with a better solution.