| 08:09.38 | yaMatt | if it acts differently between ext4 and NTFS that says to me it's not a hardware thing, it's something about your machines configuration |
| 08:10.56 | DSki | Well, I have a 3TB SATA drive, formatted with gpt and EXT5 and works fine, but the USB 4TB acting as I describe. Could it be a motherboard problem or software? |
| 09:16.26 | yaMatt | ext5?! |
| 09:16.51 | yaMatt | my feeling is it's software |
| 09:17.02 | DSki | EXT4 (a typo) |
| 09:17.24 | DSki | OK, I will raise a ticket with the distro I use to look into it. |
| 09:18.39 | DSki | You don't think it's related to capacity? I don't want to get a 4TB+ new HDD for SATA and for it to be effectively, an expensive brick. |
| 09:19.11 | yaMatt | iirc ext4 supports up to something like 16PB |
| 09:19.24 | DSki | OK |
| 09:20.04 | yaMatt | ah, 16TB (depending on block size) |
| 09:20.28 | yaMatt | the only thing I can think of is ext considers the disk unsafe for some reason and is mounting it as read-only |
| 09:20.44 | yaMatt | there's probably some output in journalctl or dmesg depending on your setup |
| 09:21.09 | DSki | The external drive has a sort of workaround, it formats to owner as root, so change owner to the user, which allows writing to it, but it is still being constantly hammered as if it's a BluRay (large device according to syslog) |
| 09:23.40 | yaMatt | hammered? so constantly seeking? |
| 09:24.21 | DSki | Yes, the access light on teh USB3 drive is constantly lashing ergo constant access. |
| 09:24.34 | DSki | Even though it's supposed to be idling. |
| 09:26.12 | yaMatt | that is really weird, it sounds like the machine thinks the disk is faulty |
| 09:26.51 | DSki | It sound;t be faulty, it's brand new. |
| 09:27.16 | DSki | Should I take it out if the enclosure and try the disk that way? |
| 09:27.55 | DSki | Means I invaidate any warranty |
| 09:28.32 | yaMatt | early failures are common |
| 09:28.41 | DSki | ok |
| 09:28.50 | yaMatt | if it is faulty then taking it out of the case is the worst thing to do |
| 09:28.52 | DSki | I've never had an early failure. |
| 09:29.04 | yaMatt | I would try a different machine if possible |
| 09:29.19 | DSki | OK, will try that. :) |
| 09:29.29 | yaMatt | just to exclude that machine from having some weird configuration issue |
| 09:29.35 | yaMatt | something ideally with a different distro |
| 09:29.56 | DSki | It#s jsut very strange because it seems to be working normal when formatted to NTFS, but dosn't like Linux formats |
| 09:32.48 | yaMatt | NTFS support has come a long way on Linux, but I don't think it's complete, it may be hiding the issues that ext can detect |
| 09:33.17 | yaMatt | it's quite common for a disk to be mounted read-only if it doesn't like the reliability of it |
| 09:33.38 | yaMatt | I saw it with a colleagues SSD after he read and wrote millions of tiny files to disk |
| 09:33.45 | yaMatt | it would only mount read-only |
| 09:37.44 | DSki | OK |
| 09:38.00 | DSki | I will investigate the USB drive further. |
| 09:39.23 | DSki | SSD, I always worry about that, I have read the horror stories of drive not working suddenly, I have an SSD for the OS only. |
| 09:40.16 | DSki | 2min for boot to Linux login screen in HDD, 15 seconds with SSD. Massive difference. |
| 09:47.20 | wethrin | Yeah, don't use SSDs for things where there's lots of small writes to the drive (logging systems, f'rexample) |
| 09:51.33 | DSki | I made sure to prevent a TMP fpartition from being used on the SSD, don't want to wear out the drive |
| 10:00.09 | yaMatt | I use SSD pretty much everywhere |
| 10:00.21 | yaMatt | the only failure I've seen was that guy who was writing millions of files |
| 10:01.08 | yaMatt | though I hear a lot of horror stories about SSDs that just stop working, unlike spinning rust that fails a bit |
| 10:01.58 | yaMatt | but I back up all my devices to my NAS |
| 10:07.06 | yaMatt | although I checked on my desktop yesterday and it said the last backup was 2 weeks ago, it's supposed to run every day |
| 10:07.09 | DSki | The OS drive replacable, the data is not. :) |
| 10:07.37 | DSki | I worry about the user data more. |
| 10:07.48 | DSki | At least SSD's ahve got cheaper in recent years. |
| 10:08.31 | DSki | Using an SSD for the OS is like night and day, very impressive speed. |
| 10:09.32 | yaMatt | definitely |
| 10:10.47 | yaMatt | I do need to put more disks in to my NAS |
| 10:11.29 | yaMatt | an expensive hobby :) |
| 10:11.48 | DSki | I wish I could afford a NAS, I swap out drives every so often instead. |
| 10:11.57 | DSki | I agree, it's expensive. |
| 11:03.52 | DSki | yaMatt, Tested the USB drive on another Linux machine, same problems, so a software problem, or the brand new drive has a problem. |
| 11:05.21 | yaMatt | that mwans you can rule out a software problem unless there's something common between the 2 systems |
| 11:05.25 | yaMatt | means* |
| 11:05.54 | DSki | Well, they are the same distro, just different machines, which is why I can't be 100% certain. |
| 11:06.45 | yaMatt | ah, right |
| 11:06.46 | DSki | I resurrected an old machine for children to play on,saved me learning another Linux version, so quick install. |
| 11:07.06 | yaMatt | did you try looking in journalctl/dmesg? |
| 11:08.04 | DSki | On my normal work machine yes, not on the machine I jsut tested on, should I look at it on the old machine? |
| 11:09.21 | yaMatt | na, just the first one is fine |
| 11:09.24 | yaMatt | what did it say? |
| 11:12.41 | DSki | What syslog says is in this pastebin, same text every time the drive is connected. > http://pastebin.com/WX2sei3u |
| 11:15.09 | yaMatt | nothing wrong there |
| 11:15.16 | yaMatt | looks like it should just be readable at /run/media/someuser/TestDrive |
| 11:15.28 | yaMatt | and writable |
| 11:16.18 | yaMatt | what does running the mount command say? |
| 11:17.35 | DSki | As it is being used by "someuser" the drive should not be constantly accessed light? None of my other USB3 (slammer capacity) drives have the access light on off even though you're not moving files around. |
| 11:19.53 | DSki | This is what it looks like with NTFS formatted on the same drive. http://pastebin.com/HMZhFnVV |
| 11:20.59 | yaMatt | similarly looks fine, I wonder if it's just the light on the front looks like that |
| 11:21.21 | yaMatt | I found this page on how to look at disk io https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/55212/how-can-i-monitor-disk-io |
| 11:22.22 | DSki | When I copied stuff under NTFS format to test, the drive didn't constantly have the light blinking, suggesting it wasn't being constantly accessed when not being used. |
| 11:22.27 | DSki | It's baffling, |
| 11:22.33 | yaMatt | ah, yes, you said |
| 11:23.13 | yaMatt | looks like you need to run 'iostat -x 1' (without '), you may need to install iostat |
| 11:24.10 | DSki | OK, will do that later today, need to do some work :) |
| 11:24.31 | DSki | BTW, do you know how to save these conversations texts in "Konversation"? |
| 11:28.41 | yaMatt | I'm afraid I've not used Konversation before |
| 11:29.03 | DSki | OK, no problem. |
| 11:45.23 | DSki | Installed package to get iostat to work. |
| 11:46.23 | DSki | Result of the iostat in this pastebin, the suspect USB3 drive is sde > http://pastebin.com/TF94wvwj |
| 11:56.01 | yaMatt | does look pretty active to me |
| 11:57.47 | DSki | Same kind of activity on both computers I jsut tested the drive on. |
| 11:58.40 | yaMatt | I wonder if it's ext4 still formatting the disk |
| 11:58.50 | yaMatt | would be useful to see what processes are accessing the disk |
| 11:58.57 | yaMatt | can't find a good tool for it though |
| 12:02.15 | yaMatt | could try the unix part of stackoverflow |
| 12:05.50 | DSki | I'm not as knwledgable on the ins and outs of Linux. |
| 12:07.11 | yaMatt | I mean, I really don't know I'm afraid, I would recommend posting your problem to https://unix.stackexchange.com/ |
| 12:07.43 | DSki | OK, I will give that a try. |
| 12:07.52 | DSki | Thanks for all your help. |
| 12:09.11 | yaMatt | no problem, I hope you find a solution |
| 12:10.18 | DSki | Sometimes there are Linux issues that get to you, although hsving used WIndows in the past, that wasn't any better - especially as it is locked down / propiatory. |
| 12:11.18 | yaMatt | I find it rare that linux does something without telling you something |
| 12:11.30 | yaMatt | ime Windows does that a lot |
| 12:12.53 | DSki | That is true, you can find out a LOT of what is going on in Linux by looking at /proc :) ....... can't do that in Windows. And upgrading hard drives is a TONNE easier in Linux, no stupid shifting of drive letters and everything breaking because of it. |
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