[CONFIGURATION] SATA Data disk gets ejected

[Johnius]

Hello!

Since the middle of the summer, my second drive has been ejected by Kubuntu so I can't read/write any larger files. I have an SSD with the OS and use an NTFS formatted HDD for data. Every 2-5 minutes, it disappears from Dolphin and reappears unmounted shortly after. I'm using a dual-boot system and Windows is not reporting any trouble with the disk. I've also run a SMART check with no errors. I believe something in one of the Kernel updates is unmounting the disk and causing havoc with my previously very stable install. I've re-installed a clean 18.04LTS today and the problem persists.

Thank you for your help,
John

[GreyGeek]

Does it have a mounting line in /etc/fstab ?

[Johnius]

It did. I edited the line and eventually removed it with no change in behavior.

[Snowhog]

Is this disc, maybe, by chance, 'going to sleep'; going into power saving mode?

[Johnius]

Possibility I didn't consider. It's a WD Blue, so it shouldn't be, especially because I'm constantly reading data from it. I couldn't find the setting in "Power Management" where I assumed it would be. Also doesn't happen on my Windows partition, so I wouldn't think it's the disc itself. Happens more frequently during write/copy functions It seems.

[jlittle]

... I couldn't find the setting...

You can set much more stuff on drives with the hdparm command. The man page is 700-odd lines long.

[Johnius]

 sudo hdparm -S 0 /dev/sdb

I'll let you know what happens.

[Johnius]

8GB file transfer good. Been playing music off the drive for several hours. Thanks for the command line info, jlittle! Thanks for the responses, GreyGeek and Snowhog! Now to get that line back in /etc/fstab...

[jlittle]

 sudo hdparm -S 0 /dev/sdb

If you find that it loses this setting on reboot or wake from suspension there's ways to run a script to reapply the setting on restart. I have the opposite requirement; my disc drives sit unused most of the time, and cause my case to hum just at the limit of hearing. So I spin them down with hdparm -y. I got tired of typing that all the time, so I found out where to put a script run on wake up, it's /lib/systemd/system-sleep. I also have a copy of hdparm that I've used setcap to allow it to run without root, and a .desktop file to run a script that uses that copy, so spinning down is a click on my panel. I hated it that much. Just ask for the details if you'd like them.

[Johnius]

It looks like I can write to the disk fine, but as soon as I try copying from it, it drops from the system, errors out, cancelling the file transfer.

[Johnius]

Still have this problem. Looking at a reversion to 14.04 as a possible solution, which seems absurd. I can't even read the folder structure before 18.04 dumps the disk, never to be seen again, which is worse than my original problem. I've checked the drive and cables, it's definitely an OS problem. I'd appreciate any leads. Thanks.