Re: [gentoo-user] cryptsetup close and device in use when it is not

[Dale]

Frank Steinmetzger wrote:
> Am Sun, Jul 25, 2021 at 06:10:19PM -0500 schrieb Dale:
>
>> I've tried external drives connected by USB before and hated them.  Slow
>> when they do work and buggy at that.
> Theoretically, HDDs are not able to saturate USB 3. And from my observation,
> I do get their maximum performance – my 2.5″ 1 TB WD delivers about 80-90 MB/s
> read speed and said Intenso/Seagate 3.5″ gives me up to around 140 MB/s tops.
> I used dstat to gather those numbers.

I think all my USB ports are USB2.  It's slower.  What you post above is
about what I get on my external eSATA.  If I were using USB3, things may
be different.  Maybe.  ;-)


>> I've had more drives go bad when using USB enclosures than I've ever had
>> on IDE or (e)SATA.
> Interesting, I can’t really confirm such a correlation from the drives I
> have lying around. And I don’t see how USB can cause damage to a drive.
> Except for physical impacts owing to the fact that USB drives are easily
> moved around.
>

Those particular drives sat on the desk next to my computer.  They
rarely moved.  Heck, I rarely unplugged them.  Just turn them off when
done. 


>> I've had two drives fail after years of service that were IDE or SATA.  I
>> have three drives that are bricks and all of them were in USB enclosures
>> and far young to die.
> Perhaps they became too hot during operation. Enclosures don’t usually
> account for thermals. Didn’t you mention you lived in a hot area?
>

Every enclosure I buy has a fan.  The enclosures were pretty well built
as far as the case goes.


>> I paid more for eSATA external enclosures and have had no
>> problems with drives going dead yet.  All of them have far surpassed the
>> drives in the USB enclosures.
> Hm... bad (in the sense of cheap) USB controllers on the mobo or the
> enclosures? Or bad USB cables? What kind of HDD death are we talking about?
> Certainly not bad sectors, right?
>

After a while I'd start getting errors and it would either remount ro or
just unmount completely.  After a while, the drives wouldn't respond at
all.  They spin up but it's as if they are not connected with the data
cable.  Eventually, I plugged them into my computer as SATA drives. 
They still wouldn't show up.  It was as if they were not there.  They
did spin up tho. 

>> I think my drives are either Seagate or WD.  I tend to stick with those
>> two, unless it is a really awesome deal.
> Yea. First the SMR fiasco became public and then there was some other PR
> stunt they did that I can’t remember right now, and I said “I can’t buy WD
> anymore”. But there is no real alternative these days. And CMR drives are
> becoming ever rarer, especially in the 2.5″ realm. Except for one single
> seagate model, there isn’t even a bare SATA drive above 2 TB available on
> the market! Everything above that size is external USB stuff. And those
> disks don’t come with standard SATA connectors anymore, but have the USB
> socket soldered onto their PCB.
>

I bought a SMR before I was aware of the problems with them.  It's just
a backup drive but I still have to wait for it to stop bumping before I
power it off.  Sometimes it only takes a few minutes, sometimes it bumps
for a while.  The CMR I use as a backup drive, different data, is
smaller.  It doesn't do that so I can unhook it right after it finishes. 
>> I've never updated the firmware on a drive before.
> Me neither. I think I updated an SSD once.
>

I've never had a SSD.  Thinking about it tho. 

Hmmm, just realized I didn't do my usual Sunday updates and backups. 
Ooooops.  :/

Dale

:-) :-)