Question HDD + case + eject windows

[brutalame]

As soon as the HDD doesn't need to write/read, the HDD park the heads but the magnetic plate keep spinning. When you eject the disk (or when it goes in sleep mode), the magnetic plate stop spinning.

 

[theFOoL]

Indeed. I've taken one of the HDDs out without ejecting from that icon and ofc without any Disk Activity so but nothing has happened. I buy my HDDs used off ebay

 

[eidairaman1]

Use the eject function in windows, i believe it even lets you know if drive is still being written to, not all components have indicators on the outside of their cases to let you know when drive activity is going on or stopped...

As soon as the HDD doesn't need to write/read, the HDD park the heads but the magnetic plate keep spinning. When you eject the disk (or when it goes in sleep mode), the magnetic plate stop spinning.

Depends on windows power properties and how the drives firmware is configured.

 

[theFOoL]

Use the eject function in windows, i believe it even lets you know if drive is still being written to, not all components have indicators on the outside of their cases to let you know when drive activity is going on or stopped...


Depends on windows power properties and how the drives firmware is configured.

Yes that's correct...

 

[nandobadam]

It is very difficult to find out how the firmware is configured. I only know that the enclosure case Orico 25pw1 and Kesu 2530 uses the JMS 578 chip. I do not know if you are referring to the firmware of the enclosure or HDD. I still have doubts. What happens in detail after ejecting? Safely remove hardware from Windows and without disconnecting the USB cable after ejecting?

 

[Blue4130]

First I used the windows command eject "safely remove hardware the letter E: disappeared from Windows but the usb3.0 cable from the enclosure case remained connected to the enclosure and pc after that my hand hit the enclosure case and it moved a little on the table but it wasn't a very strong impact but I read that HDDs are very fragile to any impact in my case the heads scratched the platters?

You have been asking this question for a month on various forums. You have your answer. Your disk is fine. Small bumps will not kill it. It is still working a month after you "bumped" it with your hand, correct?

 

[eidairaman1]

It is very difficult to find out how the firmware is configured. I only know that the enclosure case Orico 25pw1 and Kesu 2530 uses the JMS 578 chip. I do not know if you are referring to the firmware of the enclosure or HDD. I still have doubts. What happens in detail after ejecting? Safely remove hardware from Windows and without disconnecting the USB cable after ejecting?

Well in that case, firmware of both the case and the hdd control board itself.

You have been asking this question for a month on various forums. You have your answer. Your disk is fine. Small bumps will not kill it. It is still working a month after you "bumped" it with your hand, correct?

Some are obsessive...

 

[nandobadam]

What function name needs to be within the enclosure firmware and within the hdd 2.5 firmware to park the heads after ejection in Windows even without disconnecting the usb cable after ejection?

 

[Calenhad]

What function name needs to be within the enclosure firmware and within the hdd 2.5 firmware to park the heads after ejection in Windows even without disconnecting the usb cable after ejection?

Hard drives are still using some version of the ATA command set to this day. This is a set of instructions that the OS use to communicate with the HDD controller, and have been in use since at least the beginning of IDE drives. There are several ways to command a drive to power down. You will find commands such as IDLE, STANDBY and SLEEP to instruct the drive to go into various levels of power saving. Any modern-ish hdd will also have a built in power reserve to be able to park the heads in case of a sudden power loss. The enclosure controller is simply a translator enabling Serial ATA communication via USB. All that does is pass ATA commands between the OS and HDD. Your drive will never work if it does not support ATA commands, so there is no need to check if "the correct function" is in firmware or not.

When you eject with the Windows eject option you are telling Windows to finish writing data to the drive. Then the drive is issued something like the ATA SLEEP command to power down. This is as close to off you can get without actually cutting power. When Windows says it can be removed the drive have no more queued writes to perform and everything except the controller electronics on the hdd are powered down. Heads are indeed very parked by then as well.

The short, but technical, version is that the drive is in one of these states while in use: ACTIVE > IDLE > STANDBY > SLEEP. The heads are parked in all but the ACTIVE state. Power management settings will put the drive into the IDLE state as soon as there are no read/write activity for a short time. Meaning that most of the time while it is connected and showing as E: in Windows the heads are already parked. Only when you are actively accessing the drive will the heads be moving and vulnerable to shocks. The period before the drive enters the IDLE state is configurable in many drives, but 2.5" drives are by default set to very aggressively enter an IDLE state.

Also worth noting is that many 2.5" hdds have shock sensors that will emergency park the heads if a shock is detected. So they are surprisingly resilient unless you drop them on a concrete floor or something really stupid.

 

[Athlonite]

I've always just yoinked the USB cable once copying of data completes it's an old WD 256GB 2.5" HDD it's still working well zero bad sectors.
I've always found that as soon as power is lost the hdd parks the heads automatically

 

[nandobadam]

Hard drives are still using some version of the ATA command set to this day. This is a set of instructions that the OS use to communicate with the HDD controller, and have been in use since at least the beginning of IDE drives. There are several ways to command a drive to power down. You will find commands such as IDLE, STANDBY and SLEEP to instruct the drive to go into various levels of power saving. Any modern-ish hdd will also have a built in power reserve to be able to park the heads in case of a sudden power loss. The enclosure controller is simply a translator enabling Serial ATA communication via USB. All that does is pass ATA commands between the OS and HDD. Your drive will never work if it does not support ATA commands, so there is no need to check if "the correct function" is in firmware or not.

When you eject with the Windows eject option you are telling Windows to finish writing data to the drive. Then the drive is issued something like the ATA SLEEP command to power down. This is as close to off you can get without actually cutting power. When Windows says it can be removed the drive have no more queued writes to perform and everything except the controller electronics on the hdd are powered down. Heads are indeed very parked by then as well.

The short, but technical, version is that the drive is in one of these states while in use: ACTIVE > IDLE > STANDBY > SLEEP. The heads are parked in all but the ACTIVE state. Power management settings will put the drive into the IDLE state as soon as there are no read/write activity for a short time. Meaning that most of the time while it is connected and showing as E: in Windows the heads are already parked. Only when you are actively accessing the drive will the heads be moving and vulnerable to shocks. The period before the drive enters the IDLE state is configurable in many drives, but 2.5" drives are by default set to very aggressively enter an IDLE state.

Also worth noting is that many 2.5" hdds have shock sensors that will emergency park the heads if a shock is detected. So they are surprisingly resilient unless you drop them on a concrete floor or something really stupid.

1) This was one of the most detailed answers I received, thank you

I was confused because some people told me that the parking of heads or not parking heads of the 2.5" HDD + USB3.0 enclosure case after ejecting safely remove hardware in Windows but keeping the USB3.0 cable connected to the enclosure and PC depended on the model, brand and firmware configuration of the USB3.0 enclosure case, which also depended on the model, brand and firmware of the 2.5" HDD and also depended on the Windows power settings

Other people told me that it only depended on the model, brand and firmware configuration of the 2.5" HDD and I didn't know which was true

2) In what year approximately was the function of parking the heads when ejecting safely remove hardware even without disconnecting the USB cable after ejecting in Windows introduced in all 2.5" HDDs of any brand and model? The version of Windows to send these commands after ejection also received this update from which year?

3) my HDDs 2.5" laptop Seagate ST500LM030 (2016), Western Digital WD WD10JPVX-08JC3T5 (2011), HGST HTS541010A99E662 (2011) have these functions mentioned above? parking heads after eject in Windows without disconnect usb cable of enclosure usb and pc. my enclosures> Kesu 2530 and Orico 25PW1 black

4) another question:
I bought a 2.5" HDD on Aliexpress and it is inside an enclosure case. I know it is used, but most of the 2.5" HDDs sold on Aliexpress are used but show 2 hours of use and good health on crystaldiskinfo. What do they do?

Do these Aliexpress sellers also modify, remove or disable important functions within the firmware such as power management or other features, or do they use firmware from another HDD model?

 

[Calenhad]

First let me make it clear that there are no definitive answers to your questions. Some where, some place, some shady person will always modify a piece of electronics to misbehave.

2) In what year approximately was the function of parking the heads when ejecting safely remove hardware even without disconnecting the USB cable after ejecting in Windows introduced in all 2.5" HDDs of any brand and model? The version of Windows to send these commands after ejection also received this update from which year?

The ATA command set I mentioned before is from DOS days, if you remove the ATA support from a drive it will not be able to communicate with your computer. Put a person that just speak English in the same room as one that only speak Spanish and see how well they communicate. Removing ATA support would be the same thing.
A hdd with power management enabled (which is default for most drives. And especially 2.5" which are meant for laptops and other similar devices, where power savings are most important). Basically anywhere you find the safely eject option you can assume the device will power down safely.

3) my HDDs 2.5" laptop Seagate ST500LM030 (2016), Western Digital WD WD10JPVX-08JC3T5 (2011), HGST HTS541010A99E662 (2011) have these functions mentioned above? parking heads after eject in Windows without disconnect usb cable of enclosure usb and pc. my enclosures> Kesu 2530 and Orico 25PW1 black

Your drives will have power management features that support the above. What I can not answer is if they have the shock sensor, but that is outside the scope of your questions anyway.

The safe eject feature is supported just fine, since that relies on the ATA commands. It is theoretically possible that the usb enclosure is messing with this. But the only time I have seen this, it was the other way round. USB enclosures that aggressively put the drive to sleep, even while the OS is accessing the drive. So, once again, there are no 100% guarantees. But most likely your enclosures will perform as expected and put your drives to sleep when you select eject. Keeping the USB cable connected will keep the enclosure and drive controllers powered, but the "mechanical" parts of the drive will be powered down. Same way your monitor turns off when you power off your computer. The power is still connected, but the electronics have shut down 99% of the device. Sometimes drives will give an audible click when the heads park and you will hear the spindle motor spin down as well. But many are so quiet that this is hard to notice these days.

4) another question:
I bought a 2.5" HDD on Aliexpress and it is inside an enclosure case. I know it is used, but most of the 2.5" HDDs sold on Aliexpress are used but show 2 hours of use and good health on crystaldiskinfo. What do they do?

Do these Aliexpress sellers also modify, remove or disable important functions within the firmware such as power management or other features, or do they use firmware from another HDD model?

Those statistics are stored in the S.M.A.R.T. logs in the drive controller board. With the proper tools and knowledge you can fake those numbers. And anybody that can fake those logs can also change every other setting. I don't see any reason for them to screw around with power management though. Deleting logs to make the drive appear new is like faking the milage on a car to make it appear "healthier". Disabling power management will not have any impact on the apparent value of a drive. So there is no reason to mess with it.

Some USB enclosures will prevent you from running SMART tests and changing settings like power management. But if it is supported, a LONG SMART test will check for bad sectors. A SHORT test will test the general health of the drive. Similarly you can often change the default value for power management that way. Otherwise you will have to remove the drive from the enclosure and connect it to a sata port to do this.

 

[nandobadam]

First let me make it clear that there are no definitive answers to your questions. Some where, some place, some shady person will always modify a piece of electronics to misbehave.


The ATA command set I mentioned before is from DOS days, if you remove the ATA support from a drive it will not be able to communicate with your computer. Put a person that just speak English in the same room as one that only speak Spanish and see how well they communicate. Removing ATA support would be the same thing.
A hdd with power management enabled (which is default for most drives. And especially 2.5" which are meant for laptops and other similar devices, where power savings are most important). Basically anywhere you find the safely eject option you can assume the device will power down safely.


Your drives will have power management features that support the above. What I can not answer is if they have the shock sensor, but that is outside the scope of your questions anyway.

The safe eject feature is supported just fine, since that relies on the ATA commands. It is theoretically possible that the usb enclosure is messing with this. But the only time I have seen this, it was the other way round. USB enclosures that aggressively put the drive to sleep, even while the OS is accessing the drive. So, once again, there are no 100% guarantees. But most likely your enclosures will perform as expected and put your drives to sleep when you select eject. Keeping the USB cable connected will keep the enclosure and drive controllers powered, but the "mechanical" parts of the drive will be powered down. Same way your monitor turns off when you power off your computer. The power is still connected, but the electronics have shut down 99% of the device. Sometimes drives will give an audible click when the heads park and you will hear the spindle motor spin down as well. But many are so quiet that this is hard to notice these days.


Those statistics are stored in the S.M.A.R.T. logs in the drive controller board. With the proper tools and knowledge you can fake those numbers. And anybody that can fake those logs can also change every other setting. I don't see any reason for them to screw around with power management though. Deleting logs to make the drive appear new is like faking the milage on a car to make it appear "healthier". Disabling power management will not have any impact on the apparent value of a drive. So there is no reason to mess with it.

Some USB enclosures will prevent you from running SMART tests and changing settings like power management. But if it is supported, a LONG SMART test will check for bad sectors. A SHORT test will test the general health of the drive. Similarly you can often change the default value for power management that way. Otherwise you will have to remove the drive from the enclosure and connect it to a sata port to do this.

You said that the answer is not completely definitive for my case, these cases and 2.5" HDDs park the heads after ejecting, safely remove hardware without disconnecting the USB cable after ejection, what percentage of answers would be true?

I thought that aliexpress sellers change the firmware by disabling or removing features and parking functions and not just modifying it for a few hours of use and good health

I had a lot of doubts as to whether it was really necessary to have a specific enclosure model and specific firmware for parking heads after ejecting in Windows without disconnecting the USB cable

 

[budget_Optiplex]

As far as I'm aware, Microsoft changed the policies in Windows regarding external drives long ago, and thusly there is no need to tell Windows to eject the drives. I have just 'pulled' the flash drive or USB hard drive for years now since I was made aware of this change and have had zero issues.

Windows 10 is about to change the 'safely remove USB drive' default option

We've long been warned that failing to use the 'Safely Remove Hardware' process before pulling out a USB device such as a flash drive (pendrive), thumb drive,...

www.techspot.com

 

[nageme]

The ATA command set I mentioned before is from DOS days

But power states and such didn't exist from day one. I don't think DOS-era drives supported software-initiated powering down.

FWIW, I have a Samsung 3.5" (not 2.5") ~2010 era drive which doesn't power down after being ejected, presumably because of the Marvell 88SE9215 SATA controller it's connected to or the controller's Windows drivers (logically appears as SCSI).

As far as I'm aware, Microsoft changed the policies in Windows regarding external drives long ago

Disabling write caching doesn't seem like the right choice for large drives or HDDs.

Anecdotally, pre-Win10 I've had to power down a computer without ejecting a USB drive, as it couldn't be ejected. Windows claimed something was holding a handle in that volume.
Considering there was no write activity, I just turned the PC off.
Somehow, that lead to data corruption. And not just in a file, but the whole filesystem.
I had to work to recover all files from it, and ultimately a small percentage were lost.

 

[nandobadam]

Do the model, brand, chip of the USB3.0 enclosure case and Windows power settings have any relation to the parking of the heads of a 2.5" HDD + enclosure usb3.0 after the Windows "safely remove hardware" eject command is completed and the letter E: disappears from the system without disconnect usb cable after eject in windows?

transmit all commands and signals that Windows sends after ejection for hdd

 

[nageme]

I've done more legwork for you, with four LLM models. The beginning of the replies:

LLM1: Yes, the model, brand, chip of the USB 3.0 enclosure, and Windows power settings can all influence the behavior of a 2.5" HDD...
LLM2: No, the model, brand, chip of the USB3.0 enclosure case and Windows power settings do not have a direct relation ...
LLM3: The model, brand, and chip of the USB 3.0 enclosure case can have some relation to the parking of the heads of a 2.5" HDD ...
LLM4: There is no direct relationship between the model, brand, chip of the USB 3.0 enclosure case, and Windows power settings with the parking of the heads of a 2.5" HDD ...

 

[nandobadam]

I've done more legwork for you, with four LLM models. The beginning of the replies:

LLM1: Yes, the model, brand, chip of the USB 3.0 enclosure, and Windows power settings can all influence the behavior of a 2.5" HDD...
LLM2: No, the model, brand, chip of the USB3.0 enclosure case and Windows power settings do not have a direct relation ...
LLM3: The model, brand, and chip of the USB 3.0 enclosure case can have some relation to the parking of the heads of a 2.5" HDD ...
LLM4: There is no direct relationship between the model, brand, chip of the USB 3.0 enclosure case, and Windows power settings with the parking of the heads of a 2.5" HDD ...

chat gpt is not accuracy

 

[Calenhad]

But power states and such didn't exist from day one. I don't think DOS-era drives supported software-initiated powering down.

I mean if you want to go far enough back in time you had to manually issue the PARK command to a drive before shutting down the computer. Otherwise the heads would just crash into the platter when it was spinning down. So yes, firmware automation have come a long way. I am sure auto-parking heads on power loss/down was high on the priority list for a while, once enough people had experienced head crashes.
As I said, the ATA command set was available in DOS. I don't have exact statistics on this, but as long as the spindle motor was controlled by the drive controller logic board there is a software on/off switch available. Older drives would have 12V hardwired directly to the spindle motor for sure. I can't say for sure exactly when the majority of drives had changed over. But I will guesstimate alot sooner than you think.
Head parking was automatic on power loss by then and the PARK command could be used to manually park the heads if necessary

FWIW, I have a Samsung 3.5" (not 2.5") ~2010 era drive which doesn't power down after being ejected, presumably because of the Marvell 88SE9215 SATA controller it's connected to or the controller's Windows drivers (logically appears as SCSI).

That is probably a controller issue. Marvell does not have the best track record with their firmware for sata controllers back in the day. But I have stated numerous times, there are no 100% guarantee here either. Just like everything else in life. Sometimes you will find a device that just does not adhere to the standards.

Disabling write caching doesn't seem like the right choice for large drives or HDDs.

Only reason to disable write caching, imho, is if you absolutely must have the ability to yoink the drive from the usb port at any moment. Or, I guess, if you have a usb device capable of keeping up with the usb transfer speed without caching. But I enable caching on my external drives and I use the safely eject function.

Anecdotally, pre-Win10 I've had to power down a computer without ejecting a USB drive, as it couldn't be ejected. Windows claimed something was holding a handle in that volume.
Considering there was no write activity, I just turned the PC off.
Somehow, that lead to data corruption. And not just in a file, but the whole filesystem.
I had to work to recover all files from it, and ultimately a small percentage were lost.

Yeah, no write activity is not the same as no files being modified. Just having an Explorer window open in Windows to this day can cause a drive to not safely eject until you close that window. Sounds like you had maximum bad luck though, usually Windows will do its best to finish up any waiting file system tasks when you hit that Shut down button. Depending on the file system, all it takes is a damaged FAT, Super Block, or similar vital collection of bits, and your files will need recovering.

Did the drive work properly after? I do the odd recovery job for people and this sounds alot like a bad case of the bad sectors plague. But I can think of a handful other reasons how this can happen.

 

[nandobadam]

I mean if you want to go far enough back in time you had to manually issue the PARK command to a drive before shutting down the computer. Otherwise the heads would just crash into the platter when it was spinning down. So yes, firmware automation have come a long way. I am sure auto-parking heads on power loss/down was high on the priority list for a while, once enough people had experienced head crashes.
As I said, the ATA command set was available in DOS. I don't have exact statistics on this, but as long as the spindle motor was controlled by the drive controller logic board there is a software on/off switch available. Older drives would have 12V hardwired directly to the spindle motor for sure. I can't say for sure exactly when the majority of drives had changed over. But I will guesstimate alot sooner than you think.
Head parking was automatic on power loss by then and the PARK command could be used to manually park the heads if necessary


That is probably a controller issue. Marvell does not have the best track record with their firmware for sata controllers back in the day. But I have stated numerous times, there are no 100% guarantee here either. Just like everything else in life. Sometimes you will find a device that just does not adhere to the standards.


Only reason to disable write caching, imho, is if you absolutely must have the ability to yoink the drive from the usb port at any moment. Or, I guess, if you have a usb device capable of keeping up with the usb transfer speed without caching. But I enable caching on my external drives and I use the safely eject function.


Yeah, no write activity is not the same as no files being modified. Just having an Explorer window open in Windows to this day can cause a drive to not safely eject until you close that window. Sounds like you had maximum bad luck though, usually Windows will do its best to finish up any waiting file system tasks when you hit that Shut down button. Depending on the file system, all it takes is a damaged FAT, Super Block, or similar vital collection of bits, and your files will need recovering.

Did the drive work properly after? I do the odd recovery job for people and this sounds alot like a bad case of the bad sectors plague. But I can think of a handful other reasons how this can happen.

1 I've never used DOS, is it really that old? Is head parking during the DOS era only if the power is cut?

2) At what point in the evolution of the parking of 2.5" HDDs of any brand and model was this system updated to park the heads after ejecting and safely removing hardware in Windows even without disconnecting the USB cable from the enclosure and PC?

3) The oldest Windows I used was XP but I don't know what types of ATA commands after ejecting it sends to the enclosure and it sends it to the hdd to park the hdd heads

4) My encosures uses Chips ASM235CM and JMS578 Does the brand, model and chip of the enclosure have any relation to the transmission of all commands and signals sent from Windows ejection to the HDD? without disconnect usb cable

5) DOS is the oldest version of Windows with support for commands and signals to eject and park the HDD heads after ejection is completed from the USB 3.0 enclosure + 2.5" HDD and without disconnecting the USB cable after ejection?

 

[nageme]

Did the drive work properly after? I do the odd recovery job for people and this sounds alot like a bad case of the bad sectors plague. But I can think of a handful other reasons how this can happen.

The HDD is fine, no hardware errors. It was a logical corruption.
And an odd one at that, considering there was no write activity at least minutes before turn off. It was just an external data drive.

 

[nandobadam]

What was the first version of Windows with the function of safely ejecting and removing hardware and sending all commands that go to the USB 3.0 enclosure case to the 2.5" HDD and park the heads even without needing to disconnect the USB cable from the enclosure and PC after ejecting? Or is this option already available in DOS?

Did the first 2.5" HDDs with support for autoparking the heads only park when the power was cut? What year was the firmware of these HDDs inserted to park them even without disconnecting the cable? For example, after ejecting and safely removing hardware in Windows
Has autoparking received updates over the years?

 

[Ruru]

IIRC I used the eject feature last time with a 128MB mp3 player with Win2000. I've always just removed any drive without any ejecting after that, and haven't had any problems in the last ~20 years.

 

[:D:D]

IMHO @Onasi has a good answer, if @nandobadam cannot accept any answers then better test it yourself for closure (no pun intended)

PS Curious why your using @nandobadam instead of @gamer87fla ?

 

[eidairaman1]

What was the first version of Windows with the function of safely ejecting and removing hardware and sending all commands that go to the USB 3.0 enclosure case to the 2.5" HDD and park the heads even without needing to disconnect the USB cable from the enclosure and PC after ejecting? Or is this option already available in DOS?

Did the first 2.5" HDDs with support for autoparking the heads only park when the power was cut? What year was the firmware of these HDDs inserted to park them even without disconnecting the cable? For example, after ejecting and safely removing hardware in Windows
Has autoparking received updates over the years?

Really dude, it was nt 5.0, look use the damn feature in windows so you are sure you arent going to cause drive corruption from pulling it too early.

Usb adapters for drives translate from ATA to USB and vice versa when a command is sent to the drive it stops the drive so it can be safely removed, its the same as if you were using a dock, tape drive or esata.

Stop going in circles

You contine on with the repetiveness you will not receive help later on when you need it so use it as is.

/Thread

Stop acting like gasolin or matpc, who both are completely helpless