I believe this is of possible interest to others here: Most newer USB enclosures now support SCSI STOP/START commands. But.. the Western Digital 2.5" mobile USB2 enclosures (SATA inside) appear to also support the SCSI-ATA-Command-Passthru protocol. These are the first ones I have seen here that do this. So, things like "hdparm -I /dev/sdb" work without fuss on an external USB drive when used with these enclosures. As does setting automatic spin-down with "hdparm -S". And as an added bonus, they're rather cheaply priced with drive included. On the downside, smartctl does not work with the one I have here, complaining thusly:
$ smartctl -a -T permissive -T permissive /dev/sdb smartctl version 5.38 [i686-pc-linux-gnu] Copyright (C) 2002-8 Bruce Allen Home page is http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net/ Device: WD 823AS External Version: 1.04 scsiModePageOffset: response length too short, resp_len=4 offset=4 bd_len=0 >> Terminate command early due to bad response to IEC mode page Error Counter logging not supported scsiModePageOffset: response length too short, resp_len=4 offset=4 bd_len=0 Device does not support Self Test logging
Regardless, these devices are commonly available at Costco and other discount retailers. Mine came with a 250GB drive inside, and has model number WS2500XMS-00 on the outside. I hope to pick up another with a 320GB drive soon-ish, and see if it also has passthru. Model: WD-250XMS-00 (with 250GB drive inside, removeable). USB info: 1058:0702 Western Digital Technologies, Inc. Bridge chip by InitIO: INIC-1606L Cheers -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-ide" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
