I have a quite new Seagate 8TB archive disk. ------------------ ATA device, with non-removable media Model Number: ST8000AS0002-1NA17Z Serial Number: Z8406PV1 Firmware Revision: AR13 Transport: Serial, ATA8-AST, SATA 1.0a, SATA II Extensions, SAT ------------------ In idle, the hdparm shows strage power status, hdparm -C /dev/sdx: drive state is: unknown When using the drive, its power status seems "normal" again: drive state is: active/idle Besides the issues with IO (https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=93581), I encounter some problems with strange "clack" or "click" sounds in active/idle power state. Till now I could not determine any relation between fequenzy of appearence and my disk utilization. But I connected the disk in an external case on a windows maschine, where the noises did not appear (as the disk is formatted with EXT4 I could not read from disk, but the disk for sure spinned up when plugging the power cable of external case). What could be the reason for those sounds with Linux?
I have two of these drives in one system and I had the same strange noises with kernel 4.8. One drive is firmware AR13 and the other is AR15, but I do not know which of the drives made the noise with kernel 4.8 or if both drivers did. However I'm currently running kernel 3.16.0.0.bpo.4-amd64 and the noises are much better so far. However the state given by hdparm -C /dev/sdx on a sleeping drive is also "unknown". I'll come back here if I find out more.
(In reply to villeneuve from comment #1) > I have two of these drives in one system and I had the same strange noises > with kernel 4.8. One drive is firmware AR13 and the other is AR15, but I do > not know which of the drives made the noise with kernel 4.8 or if both > drivers did. I guess there are rumors that AR13 is buggy. But it seems that AR15 is also restricted to hardware and not only a software improvement over AR13. That said, it would be really interesting to know, if only AR13 is faulty. Then we, the buyers, had a point towards Seagate. > However I'm currently running kernel 3.16.0.0.bpo.4-amd64 and the noises are > much better so far. However the state given by hdparm -C /dev/sdx on a > sleeping drive is also "unknown". I'll come back here if I find out more. This might be related to the IO issue I have linked in the description, which seems less to occur on kernels older than 3.17. But I dont know, if there is any connection between the NCQ issue and the weird sounds produced after read/write loads. Did I understand you correctly that with kernel 3.16, you do not have these weird clicking sounds anymore? I will attach a record of the Archive Disk noises. I am currently in discussion with Seagate disk support. They asked me to run their Acoustic test in Seatools software. I will post the results after they have been evaluated by Seagate.
Created attachment 251411 [details] A record of the randomly appearing noises produced by Seagate archive disk The record shows two appearences of the click noise. This noise may appear randomly. The frequence is different from time to time. And sometimes not even appearing at all. To be able to hear it, you have to turn up your speakers.
Created attachment 251421 [details] SMART values of my archive disk v2
With my kernel kernel 3.16.0.0.bpo.4-amd64 I still have the weird clicking sounds, the same as in your recording, but way less and not every 10 seconds. However I just read in a German forum (http://www.hardwareluxx.de/community/f15/seagate-8-tb-festplatte-fuer-unter-250-nagelneu-wo-ist-der-haken-1049915-46.html) that firmware AR17 is available by requesting it from Seagate's support. I wrote to them asking for the AR17 firmware for both of my Archive drives. I'll report back if/when I got the new firmware and describe A) if AR17 is also available for drives running AR13 originally, which would rule out major hardware changes between AR13- and AR15-drives IMO and B) if AR17 results in improvements regarding noises and standby/spin-up-behaviour.