hdparm(8) — Linux manual page

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HDPARM(8)                System Manager's Manual               HDPARM(8)

NAME         top

       hdparm - get/set SATA/IDE device parameters

SYNOPSIS         top

       hdparm [options] [device ...]

DESCRIPTION         top

       hdparm provides a command line interface to various kernel
       interfaces supported by the Linux SATA/PATA/SAS "libata"
       subsystem and the older IDE driver subsystem.  Many newer (2008
       and later) USB drive enclosures now also support "SAT" (SCSI-ATA
       Command Translation) and therefore may also work with hdparm.
       E.g. recent WD "Passport" models and recent NexStar-3 enclosures.
       Some options may work correctly only with the latest kernels.

OPTIONS         top

       When no options are given, -acdgkmur is assumed.  For "Get/set"
       options, a query without the optional parameter (e.g. -d) will
       query (get) the device state, and with a parameter (e.g., -d0)
       will set the device state.

       -a     Get/set sector count for filesystem (software) read-ahead.
              This is used to improve performance in sequential reads of
              large files, by prefetching additional blocks in
              anticipation of them being needed by the running task.
              Many IDE drives also have a separate built-in read-ahead
              function, which augments this filesystem (software) read-
              ahead function.

       -A     Get/set the IDE drive´s read-lookahead feature (usually ON
              by default).  Usage: -A0 (disable) or -A1 (enable).

       -b     Get/set bus state.

       -B     Get/set Advanced Power Management feature, if the drive
              supports it. A low value means aggressive power management
              and a high value means better performance.  Possible
              settings range from values 1 through 127 (which permit
              spin-down), and values 128 through 254 (which do not
              permit spin-down).  The highest degree of power management
              is attained with a setting of 1, and the highest I/O
              performance with a setting of 254.  A value of 255 tells
              hdparm to disable Advanced Power Management altogether on
              the drive (not all drives support disabling it, but most
              do).

       -c     Get/set (E)IDE 32-bit I/O support.  A numeric parameter
              can be used to enable/disable 32-bit I/O support.
              Currently supported values include 0 to disable 32-bit I/O
              support, 1 to enable 32-bit data transfers, and 3 to
              enable 32-bit data transfers with a special sync sequence
              required by many chipsets.  The value 3 works with nearly
              all 32-bit IDE chipsets, but incurs slightly more
              overhead.  Note that "32-bit" refers to data transfers
              across a PCI or VLB bus to the interface card only; all
              (E)IDE drives still have only a 16-bit connection over the
              ribbon cable from the interface card.

       -C     Check the current IDE power mode status, which will always
              be one of unknown (drive does not support this command),
              active/idle (normal operation), standby (low power mode,
              drive has spun down), or sleeping (lowest power mode,
              drive is completely shut down).  The -S, -y, -Y, and -Z
              options can be used to manipulate the IDE power modes.

       -d     Get/set the "using_dma" flag for this drive.  This option
              now works with most combinations of drives and PCI
              interfaces which support DMA and which are known to the
              kernel IDE driver.  It is also a good idea to use the
              appropriate -X option in combination with -d1 to ensure
              that the drive itself is programmed for the correct DMA
              mode, although most BIOSs should do this for you at boot
              time.  Using DMA nearly always gives the best performance,
              with fast I/O throughput and low CPU usage.  But there are
              at least a few configurations of chipsets and drives for
              which DMA does not make much of a difference, or may even
              slow things down (on really messed up hardware!).  Your
              mileage may vary.

       --dco-freeze
              DCO stands for Device Configuration Overlay, a way for
              vendors to selectively disable certain features of a
              drive.  The --dco-freeze option will freeze/lock the
              current drive configuration, thereby preventing software
              (or malware) from changing any DCO settings until after
              the next power-on reset.

       --dco-identify
              Query and dump information regarding drive configuration
              settings which can be disabled by the vendor or OEM
              installer.  These settings show capabilities of the drive
              which might be disabled by the vendor for "enhanced
              compatibility".  When disabled, they are otherwise hidden
              and will not show in the -I identify output.  For example,
              system vendors sometimes disable 48_bit addressing on
              large drives, for compatibility (and loss of capacity)
              with a specific BIOS.  In such cases, --dco-identify will
              show that the drive is 48_bit capable, but -I will not
              show it, and nor will the drive accept 48_bit commands.

       --dco-restore
              Reset all drive settings, features, and accessible
              capacities back to factory defaults and full capabilities.
              This command will fail if DCO is frozen/locked, or if a
              -Np maximum size restriction has also been set.  This is
              EXTREMELY DANGEROUS and will very likely cause massive
              loss of data.  DO NOT USE THIS COMMAND.

       --direct
              Use the kernel´s "O_DIRECT" flag when performing a -t
              timing test.  This bypasses the page cache, causing the
              reads to go directly from the drive into hdparm's buffers,
              using so-called "raw" I/O.  In many cases, this can
              produce results that appear much faster than the usual
              page cache method, giving a better indication of raw
              device and driver performance.

       --drq-hsm-error
              VERY DANGEROUS, DON'T EVEN THINK ABOUT USING IT.  This
              option causes hdparm to issue an IDENTIFY command to the
              kernel, but incorrectly marked as a "non-data" command.
              This results in the drive being left with its
              DataReQust(DRQ) line "stuck" high.  This confuses the
              kernel drivers, and may crash the system immediately with
              massive data loss.  The option exists to help in testing
              and fortifying the kernel against similar real-world drive
              malfunctions.  VERY DANGEROUS, DO NOT USE!!

       -D     Enable/disable the on-drive defect management feature,
              whereby the drive firmware tries to automatically manage
              defective sectors by relocating them to "spare" sectors
              reserved by the factory for such.  Control of this feature
              via the -D option is not supported for most modern drives
              since ATA-4; thus this command may fail.

       -E     Set cd/dvd drive speed.  This is NOT necessary for regular
              operation, as the drive will automatically switch speeds
              on its own.  But if you want to play with it, just supply
              a speed number after the option, usually a number like 2
              or 4.  This can be useful in some cases, though, to smooth
              out DVD video playback.

       -f     Sync and flush the buffer cache for the device on exit.
              This operation is also performed internally as part of the
              -t and -T timings and other options.

       --fallocate
              This option currently works only on ext4 and xfs
              filesystem types.  When used, this must be the only option
              given.  It requires two parameters: the desired file size
              in kilo-bytes (byte count divided by 1024), followed by
              the pathname for the new file.  It will create a new file
              of the specified size, but without actually having to
              write any data to the file.  This will normally complete
              very quickly, and without thrashing the storage device.

              E.g. Create a 10KByte file: hdparm --fallocate 10
              temp_file

       --fibmap
              When used, this must be the only option given.  It
              requires a file path as a parameter, and will print out a
              list of the block extents (sector ranges) occupied by that
              file on disk.  Sector numbers are given as absolute LBA
              numbers, referenced from sector 0 of the physical device
              rather than from the partition or filesystem.  This
              information can then be used for a variety of purposes,
              such as examining the degree of fragmenation of larger
              files, or determining appropriate sectors to deliberately
              corrupt during fault-injection testing procedures.

              This option uses the new FIEMAP (file extent map) ioctl()
              when available, and falls back to the older FIBMAP (file
              block map) ioctl() otherwise.  Note that FIBMAP suffers
              from a 32-bit block-number interface, and thus not work
              beyond 8TB or 16TB.  FIBMAP is also very slow, and does
              not deal well with preallocated uncommitted extents in
              ext4/xfs filesystems, unless a sync() is done before using
              this option.

       --fwdownload
              When used, this should be the only option given.  It
              requires a file path immediately after the option,
              indicating where the new drive firmware should be read
              from.  The contents of this file will be sent to the drive
              using the (S)ATA DOWNLOAD MICROCODE command, using either
              transfer protocol 7 (entire file at once), or, if the
              drive supports it, transfer protocol 3 (segmented
              download).  This command is EXTREMELY DANGEROUS and could
              destroy both the drive and all data on it.  DO NOT USE
              THIS COMMAND.  The --fwdownload-mode3 , --fwdownload-
              mode3-max , and --fwdownload-mode7 variations on basic
              --fwdownload allow overriding automatic protocol detection
              in favour of forcing hdparm to use a specific transfer
              protocol, for testing purposes only.

       -F     Flush the on-drive write cache buffer (older drives may
              not implement this).

       -g     Display the drive geometry (cylinders, heads, sectors),
              the size (in sectors) of the device, and the starting
              offset (in sectors) of the device from the beginning of
              the drive.

       -h     Display terse usage information (help).

       -H     Read the temperature from some (mostly Hitachi) drives.
              Also reports if the temperature is within operating
              condition range (this may not be reliable). Does not cause
              the drive to spin up if idle.

       -i     Display the identification info which the kernel drivers
              (IDE, libata) have stored from boot/configuration time.
              This may differ from the current information obtainable
              directly from the drive itself with the -I option.  The
              data returned may or may not be current, depending on
              activity since booting the system.  For a more detailed
              interpretation of the identification info, refer to AT
              Attachment Interface for Disk Drives, ANSI ASC X3T9.2
              working draft, revision 4a, April 19/93, and later
              editions.

       --idle-immediate
              Issue an ATA IDLE_IMMEDIATE command, to put the drive into
              a lower power state.  Usually the device remains spun-up.

       --idle-unload
              Issue an ATA IDLE_IMMEDIATE_WITH_UNLOAD command, to unload
              or park the heads and put the drive into a lower power
              state.  Usually the device remains spun-up.

       -I     Request identification info directly from the drive, which
              is displayed in a new expanded format with considerably
              more detail than with the older -i option.

       --Iraw <pathname>
              This option dumps the drive's identify data in raw binary
              to the specified file.

       --Istdin
              This is a special variation on the -I option, which
              accepts a drive identification block as standard input
              instead of using a /dev/hd* parameter.  The format of this
              block must be exactly the same as that found in the
              /proc/ide/*/hd*/identify "files", or that produced by the
              --Istdout option described below.  This variation is
              designed for use with collected "libraries" of drive
              identification information, and can also be used on ATAPI
              drives which may give media errors with the standard
              mechanism.  When --Istdin is used, it must be the *only*
              parameter given.

       --Istdout
              This option dumps the drive's identify data in hex to
              stdout, in a format similar to that from
              /proc/ide/*/identify, and suitable for later use with the
              --Istdin option.

       -J     Get/set the Western Digital (WD) Green Drive's "idle3"
              timeout value.  This timeout controls how often the drive
              parks its heads and enters a low power consumption state.
              The factory default is eight (8) seconds, which is a very
              poor choice for use with Linux.  Leaving it at the default
              will result in hundreds of thousands of head load/unload
              cycles in a very short period of time.  The drive
              mechanism is only rated for 300,000 to 1,000,000 cycles,
              so leaving it at the default could result in premature
              failure, not to mention the performance impact of the
              drive often having to wake-up before doing routine I/O.

              WD supply a WDIDLE3.EXE DOS utility for tweaking this
              setting, and you should use that program instead of hdparm
              if at all possible.  The reverse-engineered implementation
              in hdparm is not as complete as the original official
              program, even though it does seem to work on at a least a
              few drives.  A full power cycle is required for any change
              in setting to take effect, regardless of which program is
              used to tweak things.

              A setting of 30 seconds is recommended for Linux use.
              Permitted values are from 8 to 12 seconds, and from 30 to
              300 seconds in 30-second increments.  Specify a value of
              zero (0) to disable the WD idle3 timer completely (NOT
              RECOMMENDED!).

       -k     Get/set the "keep_settings_over_reset" flag for the drive.
              When this flag is set, the drive will preserve the -dmu
              settings over a soft reset, (as done during the error
              recovery sequence).  This option defaults to off, to
              prevent drive reset loops which could be caused by
              combinations of -dmu settings.  The -k option should
              therefore only be set after one has achieved confidence in
              correct system operation with a chosen set of
              configuration settings.  In practice, all that is
              typically necessary to test a configuration (prior to
              using -k) is to verify that the drive can be read/written,
              and that no error logs (kernel messages) are generated in
              the process (look in /var/log/messages on most systems).

       -K     Set the drive´s "keep_features_over_reset" flag.  Setting
              this enables the drive to retain the settings for -APSWXZ
              over a soft reset (as done during the error recovery
              sequence).  Not all drives support this feature.

       -L     Set the drive´s doorlock flag.  Setting this to 1 will
              lock the door mechanism of some removable hard drives
              (e.g. Syquest, ZIP, Jazz..), and setting it to 0 will
              unlock the door mechanism.  Normally, Linux maintains the
              door locking mechanism automatically, depending on drive
              usage (locked whenever a filesystem is mounted).  But on
              system shutdown, this can be a nuisance if the root
              partition is on a removable disk, since the root partition
              is left mounted (read-only) after shutdown.  So, by using
              this command to unlock the door after the root filesystem
              is remounted read-only, one can then remove the cartridge
              from the drive after shutdown.

       -m     Get/set sector count for multiple sector I/O on the drive.
              A setting of 0 disables this feature.  Multiple sector
              mode (aka IDE Block Mode), is a feature of most modern IDE
              hard drives, permitting the transfer of multiple sectors
              per I/O interrupt, rather than the usual one sector per
              interrupt.  When this feature is enabled, it typically
              reduces operating system overhead for disk I/O by 30-50%.
              On many systems, it also provides increased data
              throughput of anywhere from 5% to 50%.  Some drives,
              however (most notably the WD Caviar series), seem to run
              slower with multiple mode enabled.  Your mileage may vary.
              Most drives support the minimum settings of 2, 4, 8, or 16
              (sectors).  Larger settings may also be possible,
              depending on the drive.  A setting of 16 or 32 seems
              optimal on many systems.  Western Digital recommends lower
              settings of 4 to 8 on many of their drives, due tiny
              (32kB) drive buffers and non-optimized buffering
              algorithms.  The -i option can be used to find the maximum
              setting supported by an installed drive (look for
              MaxMultSect in the output).  Some drives claim to support
              multiple mode, but lose data at some settings.  Under rare
              circumstances, such failures can result in massive
              filesystem corruption.

       --make-bad-sector
              Deliberately create a bad sector (aka. "media error") on
              the disk.  EXCEPTIONALLY DANGEROUS. DO NOT USE THIS
              OPTION!!  This can be useful for testing of device/RAID
              error recovery mechanisms.  The sector number is given as
              a (base10) parameter after the option.  Depending on the
              device, hdparm will choose one of two possible ATA
              commands for corrupting the sector.  The WRITE_LONG works
              on most drives, but only up to the 28-bit sector boundary.
              Some very recent drives (2008) may support the new
              WRITE_UNCORRECTABLE_EXT command, which works for any LBA48
              sector.  If available, hdparm will use that in preference
              to WRITE_LONG.  The WRITE_UNCORRECTABLE_EXT command itself
              presents a choice of how the new bad sector should behave.
              By default, it will look like any other bad sector, and
              the drive may take some time to retry and fail on
              subsequent READs of the sector.  However, if a single
              letter f is prepended immediately in front of the first
              digit of the sector number parameter, then hdparm will
              issue a "flagged" WRITE_UNCORRECTABLE_EXT, which causes
              the drive to merely flag the sector as bad (rather than
              genuinely corrupt it), and subsequent READs of the sector
              will fail immediately (rather than after several retries).
              Note also that the --repair-sector option can be used to
              restore (any) bad sectors when they are no longer needed,
              including sectors that were genuinely bad (the drive will
              likely remap those to a fresh area on the media).

       -M     Get/set Automatic Acoustic Management (AAM) setting. Most
              modern harddisk drives have the ability to speed down the
              head movements to reduce their noise output.  The possible
              values are between 0 and 254. 128 is the most quiet (and
              therefore slowest) setting and 254 the fastest (and
              loudest). Some drives have only two levels (quiet / fast),
              while others may have different levels between 128 and
              254.  At the moment, most drives only support 3 options,
              off, quiet, and fast.  These have been assigned the values
              0, 128, and 254 at present, respectively, but integer
              space has been incorporated for future expansion, should
              this change.

       -n     Get or set the "ignore_write_errors" flag in the driver.
              Do NOT play with this without grokking the driver source
              code first.

       -N     Get/set max visible number of sectors, also known as the
              Host Protected Area setting.  Without a parameter, -N
              displays the current setting, which is reported as two
              values: the first gives the current max sectors setting,
              and the second shows the native (real) hardware limit for
              the disk.  The difference between these two values
              indicates how many sectors of the disk are currently
              hidden from the operating system, in the form of a Host
              Protected Area (HPA).  This area is often used by computer
              makers to hold diagnostic software, and/or a copy of the
              originally provided operating system for recovery
              purposes.  Another possible use is to hide the true
              capacity of a very large disk from a BIOS/system that
              cannot normally cope with drives of that size (eg. most
              current {2010} BIOSs cannot deal with drives larger than
              2TB, so an HPA could be used to cause a 3TB drive to
              report itself as a 2TB drive).  To change the current max
              (VERY DANGEROUS, DATA LOSS IS EXTREMELY LIKELY), a new
              value should be provided (in base10) immediately following
              the -N option.  This value is specified as a count of
              sectors, rather than the "max sector address" of the
              drive.  Drives have the concept of a temporary (volatile)
              setting which is lost on the next hardware reset, as well
              as a more permanent (non-volatile) value which survives
              resets and power cycles.  By default, -N affects only the
              temporary (volatile) setting.  To change the permanent
              (non-volatile) value, prepend a leading p character
              immediately before the first digit of the value.  Drives
              are supposed to allow only a single permanent change per
              session.  A hardware reset (or power cycle) is required
              before another permanent -N operation can succeed.  Note
              that any attempt to set this value may fail if the disk is
              being accessed by other software at the same time.  This
              is because setting the value requires a pair of back-to-
              back drive commands, but there is no way to prevent some
              other command from being inserted between them by the
              kernel.  So if it fails initially, just try again.  Kernel
              support for -N is buggy for many adapter types across many
              kernel versions, in that an incorrect (too small) max size
              value is sometimes reported.  As of the 2.6.27 kernel,
              this does finally seem to be working on most hardware.

       --offset
              Offsets to given number of GiB (1024*1024*1024) when
              performing -t timings of device reads.  Speed changes
              (about twice) along many mechanical drives.  Usually the
              maximum is at the beginning, but not always.  Solid-state
              drives (SSDs) should show similar timings regardless of
              offset.

       -p     Attempt to reprogram the IDE interface chipset for the
              specified PIO mode, or attempt to auto-tune for the "best"
              PIO mode supported by the drive.  This feature is
              supported in the kernel for only a few "known" chipsets,
              and even then the support is iffy at best.  Some IDE
              chipsets are unable to alter the PIO mode for a single
              drive, in which case this option may cause the PIO mode
              for both drives to be set.  Many IDE chipsets support
              either fewer or more than the standard six (0 to 5) PIO
              modes, so the exact speed setting that is actually
              implemented will vary by chipset/driver sophistication.
              Use with extreme caution!  This feature includes zero
              protection for the unwary, and an unsuccessful outcome may
              result in severe filesystem corruption!

       -P     Set the maximum sector count for the drive´s internal
              prefetch mechanism.  Not all drives support this feature,
              and it was dropped from the official spec as of ATA-4.

       --prefer-ata12
              When using the SAT (SCSI ATA Translation) protocol, hdparm
              normally prefers to use the 16-byte command format
              whenever possible.  But some USB drive enclosures don't
              work correctly with 16-byte commands.  This option can be
              used to force use of the smaller 12-byte command format
              with such drives.  hdparm will still revert to 16-byte
              commands for things that cannot be done with the 12-byte
              format (e.g. sector accesses beyond 28-bits).

       -q     Handle the next option quietly, suppressing normal output
              (but not error messages).  This is useful for reducing
              screen clutter when running from system startup scripts.
              Not applicable to the -i or -v or -t or -T options.

       -Q     Get or set the device's command queue_depth, if supported
              by the hardware.  This only works with 2.6.xx (or later)
              kernels, and only with device and driver combinations
              which support changing the queue_depth.  For SATA disks,
              this is the Native Command Queuing (NCQ) queue depth.

       -r     Get/set read-only flag for the device.  When set, Linux
              disallows write operations on the device.

       -R     Get/set Write-Read-Verify feature, if the drive supports
              it.  Usage: -R0 (disable) or -R1 (enable).  This feature
              is intended to have the drive firmware automatically read-
              back any data that is written by software, to verify that
              the data was successfully written.  This is generally
              overkill, and can slow down disk writes by as much as a
              factor of two (or more).

       --read-sector
              Reads from the specified sector number, and dumps the
              contents in hex to standard output.  The sector number
              must be given (base10) after this option.  hdparm will
              issue a low-level read (completely bypassing the usual
              block layer read/write mechanisms) for the specified
              sector.  This can be used to definitively check whether a
              given sector is bad (media error) or not (doing so through
              the usual mechanisms can sometimes give false positives).

       --repair-sector
              This is an alias for the --write-sector option.  VERY
              DANGEROUS.

       -s     Enable/disable the power-on in standby feature, if
              supported by the drive.  VERY DANGEROUS.  Do not use
              unless you are absolutely certain that both the system
              BIOS (or firmware) and the operating system kernel (Linux
              >= 2.6.22) support probing for drives that use this
              feature.  When enabled, the drive is powered-up in the
              standby mode to allow the controller to sequence the spin-
              up of devices, reducing the instantaneous current draw
              burden when many drives share a power supply.  Primarily
              for use in large RAID setups.  This feature is usually
              disabled and the drive is powered-up in the active mode
              (see -C above).  Note that a drive may also allow enabling
              this feature by a jumper.  Some SATA drives support the
              control of this feature by pin 11 of the SATA power
              connector. In these cases, this command may be unsupported
              or may have no effect.

       -S     Put the drive into idle (low-power) mode, and also set the
              standby (spindown) timeout for the drive.  This timeout
              value is used by the drive to determine how long to wait
              (with no disk activity) before turning off the spindle
              motor to save power.  Under such circumstances, the drive
              may take as long as 30 seconds to respond to a subsequent
              disk access, though most drives are much quicker.  The
              encoding of the timeout value is somewhat peculiar.  A
              value of zero means "timeouts are disabled": the device
              will not automatically enter standby mode.  Values from 1
              to 240 specify multiples of 5 seconds, yielding timeouts
              from 5 seconds to 20 minutes.  Values from 241 to 251
              specify from 1 to 11 units of 30 minutes, yielding
              timeouts from 30 minutes to 5.5 hours.  A value of 252
              signifies a timeout of 21 minutes. A value of 253 sets a
              vendor-defined timeout period between 8 and 12 hours, and
              the value 254 is reserved.  255 is interpreted as 21
              minutes plus 15 seconds.  Note that some older drives may
              have very different interpretations of these values.

       -t     Perform timings of device reads for benchmark and
              comparison purposes.  For meaningful results, this
              operation should be repeated 2-3 times on an otherwise
              inactive system (no other active processes) with at least
              a couple of megabytes of free memory.  This displays the
              speed of reading through the buffer cache to the disk
              without any prior caching of data.  This measurement is an
              indication of how fast the drive can sustain sequential
              data reads under Linux, without any filesystem overhead.
              To ensure accurate measurements, the buffer cache is
              flushed during the processing of -t using the BLKFLSBUF
              ioctl.

       -T     Perform timings of cache reads for benchmark and
              comparison purposes.  For meaningful results, this
              operation should be repeated 2-3 times on an otherwise
              inactive system (no other active processes) with at least
              a couple of megabytes of free memory.  This displays the
              speed of reading directly from the Linux buffer cache
              without disk access.  This measurement is essentially an
              indication of the throughput of the processor, cache, and
              memory of the system under test.

       --trim-sector-ranges
              For Solid State Drives (SSDs).  EXCEPTIONALLY DANGEROUS.
              DO NOT USE THIS OPTION!!  Tells the drive firmware to
              discard unneeded data sectors, destroying any data that
              may have been present within them.  This makes those
              sectors available for immediate use by the firmware's
              garbage collection mechanism, to improve scheduling for
              wear-leveling of the flash media.  This option expects one
              or more sector range pairs immediately after the option:
              an LBA starting address, a colon, and a sector count (max
              65535), with no intervening spaces.  EXCEPTIONALLY
              DANGEROUS. DO NOT USE THIS OPTION!!

              E.g.  hdparm --trim-sector-ranges 1000:4 7894:16 /dev/sdz

       --trim-sector-ranges-stdin
              Identical to --trim-sector-ranges above, except the list
              of lba:count pairs is read from stdin rather than being
              specified on the command line.  This can be used to avoid
              problems with excessively long command lines.  It also
              permits batching of many more sector ranges into single
              commands to the drive, up to the currently configured
              transfer limit (max_sectors_kb).

       -u     Get/set the interrupt-unmask flag for the drive.  A
              setting of 1 permits the driver to unmask other interrupts
              during processing of a disk interrupt, which greatly
              improves Linux´s responsiveness and eliminates "serial
              port overrun" errors.  Use this feature with caution: some
              drive/controller combinations do not tolerate the
              increased I/O latencies possible when this feature is
              enabled, resulting in massive filesystem corruption.  In
              particular, CMD-640B and RZ1000 (E)IDE interfaces can be
              unreliable (due to a hardware flaw) when this option is
              used with kernel versions earlier than 2.0.13.  Disabling
              the IDE prefetch feature of these interfaces (usually a
              BIOS/CMOS setting) provides a safe fix for the problem for
              use with earlier kernels.

       -v     Display some basic settings, similar to -acdgkmur for IDE.
              This is also the default behaviour when no options are
              specified.

       -V     Display program version and exit immediately.

       --verbose
              Display extra diagnostics from some commands.

       -w     Perform a device reset (DANGEROUS).  Do NOT use this
              option.  It exists for unlikely situations where a reboot
              might otherwise be required to get a confused drive back
              into a useable state.

       --write-sector
              Writes zeros to the specified sector number.  VERY
              DANGEROUS.  The sector number must be given (base10) after
              this option.  hdparm will issue a low-level write
              (completely bypassing the usual block layer read/write
              mechanisms) to the specified sector.  This can be used to
              force a drive to repair a bad sector (media error).

       -W     Get/set the IDE/SATA drive´s write-caching feature.

       -X     Set the IDE transfer mode for (E)IDE/ATA drives.  This is
              typically used in combination with -d1 when enabling DMA
              to/from a drive on a supported interface chipset, where -X
              mdma2 is used to select multiword DMA mode2 transfers and
              -X sdma1 is used to select simple mode 1 DMA transfers.
              With systems which support UltraDMA burst timings, -X
              udma2 is used to select UltraDMA mode2 transfers (you´ll
              need to prepare the chipset for UltraDMA beforehand).
              Apart from that, use of this option is seldom necessary
              since most/all modern IDE drives default to their fastest
              PIO transfer mode at power-on.  Fiddling with this can be
              both needless and risky.  On drives which support
              alternate transfer modes, -X can be used to switch the
              mode of the drive only.  Prior to changing the transfer
              mode, the IDE interface should be jumpered or programmed
              (see -p option) for the new mode setting to prevent loss
              and/or corruption of data.  Use this with extreme caution!
              For the PIO (Programmed Input/Output) transfer modes used
              by Linux, this value is simply the desired PIO mode number
              plus 8.  Thus, a value of 09 sets PIO mode1, 10 enables
              PIO mode2, and 11 selects PIO mode3.  Setting 00 restores
              the drive´s "default" PIO mode, and 01 disables IORDY.
              For multiword DMA, the value used is the desired DMA mode
              number plus 32.  for UltraDMA, the value is the desired
              UltraDMA mode number plus 64.

       -y     Force an IDE drive to immediately enter the low power
              consumption standby mode, usually causing it to spin down.
              The current power mode status can be checked using the -C
              option.

       -Y     Force an IDE drive to immediately enter the lowest power
              consumption sleep mode, causing it to shut down
              completely.  A hard or soft reset is required before the
              drive can be accessed again (the Linux IDE driver will
              automatically handle issuing a reset if/when needed).  The
              current power mode status can be checked using the -C
              option.

       -z     Force a kernel re-read of the partition table of the
              specified device(s).

       -Z     Disable the automatic power-saving function of certain
              Seagate drives (ST3xxx models?), to prevent them from
              idling/spinning-down at inconvenient times.

ATA Security Feature Set         top


       These switches are DANGEROUS to experiment with, and might not
       work with some kernels.  USE AT YOUR OWN RISK.

       --security-help
              Display terse usage info for all of the --security-*
              options.

       --security-freeze
              Freeze the drive´s security settings.  The drive does not
              accept any security commands until next power-on reset.
              Use this function in combination with --security-unlock to
              protect drive from any attempt to set a new password. Can
              be used standalone, too.  No other options are permitted
              on the command line with this one.

       --security-prompt-for-password
              Prompt for the --security PWD rather than getting from the
              command line args.  This avoids having passwords show up
              in shell history or in /proc/self/cmdline during
              execution.

       --security-unlock PWD
              Unlock the drive, using password PWD.  Password is given
              as an ASCII string and is padded with NULs to reach 32
              bytes.  The applicable drive password is selected with the
              --user-master switch (default is "user" password).  No
              other options are permitted on the command line with this
              one.

       --security-set-pass PWD
              Lock the drive, using password PWD (Set Password)
              (DANGEROUS).  Password is given as an ASCII string and is
              padded with NULs to reach 32 bytes.  Use the special
              password NULL to set an empty password.  The applicable
              drive password is selected with the --user-master switch
              (default is "user" password) and the applicable security
              mode with the --security-mode switch.  No other options
              are permitted on the command line with this one.

       --security-disable PWD
              Disable drive locking, using password PWD.  Password is
              given as an ASCII string and is padded with NULs to reach
              32 bytes.  The applicable drive password is selected with
              the --user-master switch (default is "user" password).  No
              other options are permitted on the command line with this
              one.

       --security-erase PWD
              Erase (locked) drive, using password PWD (DANGEROUS).
              Password is given as an ASCII string and is padded with
              NULs to reach 32 bytes.  Use the special password NULL to
              represent an empty password.  The applicable drive
              password is selected with the --user-master switch
              (default is "user" password).  No other options are
              permitted on the command line with this one.

       --security-erase-enhanced PWD
              Enhanced erase (locked) drive, using password PWD
              (DANGEROUS).  Password is given as an ASCII string and is
              padded with NULs to reach 32 bytes.  The applicable drive
              password is selected with the --user-master switch
              (default is "user" password).  No other options are
              permitted on the command line with this one.

       --user-master USER
              Specifies which password (user/master) to select.
              Defaults to user password.  Only useful in combination
              with --security-unlock, --security-set-pass, --security-
              disable, --security-erase or --security-erase-enhanced.
                      u       user password
                      m       master password

       --security-mode MODE
              Specifies which security mode (high/maximum) to set.
              Defaults to high.  Only useful in combination with
              --security-set-pass.
                      h       high security
                      m       maximum security

              THIS FEATURE IS EXPERIMENTAL AND NOT WELL TESTED. USE AT
              YOUR OWN RISK.

FILES         top

       /etc/hdparm.conf

BUGS         top

       As noted above, the -m sectcount and -u 1 options should be used
       with caution at first, preferably on a read-only filesystem.
       Most drives work well with these features, but a few
       drive/controller combinations are not 100% compatible.
       Filesystem corruption may result.  Backup everything before
       experimenting!

       Some options (e.g. -r for SCSI) may not work with old kernels as
       necessary ioctl()´s were not supported.

       Although this utility is intended primarily for use with SATA/IDE
       hard disk devices, several of the options are also valid (and
       permitted) for use with SCSI hard disk devices and MFM/RLL hard
       disks with XT interfaces.

       The Linux kernel up until 2.6.12 (and probably later) doesn´t
       handle the security unlock and disable commands gracefully and
       will segfault and in some cases even panic. The security commands
       however might indeed have been executed by the drive. This poor
       kernel behaviour makes the PIO data security commands rather
       useless at the moment.

       Note that the "security erase" and "security disable" commands
       have been implemented as two consecutive PIO data commands and
       will not succeed on a locked drive because the second command
       will not be issued after the segfault.  See the code for hints
       how patch it to work around this problem. Despite the segfault it
       is often still possible to run two instances of hdparm
       consecutively and issue the two necessary commands that way.

AUTHOR         top

       hdparm has been written by Mark Lord <[email protected]>, the
       original primary developer and maintainer of the (E)IDE driver
       for Linux, and current contributor to the libata subsystem, along
       with suggestions and patches from many netfolk.

       The disable Seagate auto-powersaving code is courtesy of Tomi
       Leppikangas([email protected]).

       Security freeze command by Benjamin Benz, 2005.

       PIO data out security commands by Leonard den Ottolander, 2005.
       Some other parts by Benjamin Benz and others.

SEE ALSO         top

       http://www.t13.org/ Technical Committee T13 AT Attachment
       (ATA/ATAPI) Interface.

       http://www.serialata.org/ Serial ATA International Organization.

       http://www.compactflash.org/ CompactFlash Association.

COLOPHON         top

       This page is part of the hdparm (get/set ATA/SATA drive
       parameters under Linux) project.  Information about the project
       can be found at ⟨http://hdparm.sourceforge.net/⟩.  It is not
       known how to report bugs for this man page; if you know, please
       send a mail to [email protected].  This page was obtained from
       the tarball hdparm-9.56.tar.gz fetched from
       ⟨http://sourceforge.net/projects/hdparm/files/latest/download?source=dlp⟩
       on 2024-06-14.  If you discover any rendering problems in this
       HTML version of the page, or you believe there is a better or
       more up-to-date source for the page, or you have corrections or
       improvements to the information in this COLOPHON (which is not
       part of the original manual page), send a mail to
       [email protected]

Version 9.55                   March 2018                      HDPARM(8)

Pages that refer to this page: fsync(2)proc(5)proc_ide(5)