[smartmontools-support] I can't complete the long test

[Nathan Stratton Treadway]

On Fri, Apr 23, 2021 at 11:56:34 +0200, Carlos E. R. wrote:
> I have another identical disk and it suffers the same problem. But
> other two external disk, half the size, don't exhibit the problem.
> 
> It says "aborted by host". How, why? What can I do to impede this
> abortion? The machine runs 24/7 and that disk is currently not mounted.

Note that in this context (a message worded from the SATA drive's point
of view), "host" is not your computer but rather the SATA controller
built in to the USB enclosure.

Some enclosures have an automatic inactivity timeout hard-coded into
their firmware, separate from any Linux-level timeout -- and since no
traffic is passing between the computer and the drive while the
self-test is underway, that period of time gets considered "inactive" by
the firmware and it proceeds to suspend the drive, mid-test.

You may be able to find more detailed information on your particular
enclosures' behaviors based on their USB ids (e.g. the output of
"lsusb").

In the past I have indeed been successful working around this problem by
using a loop to periodically do "activity" on the drive while the
self-test was running.  Did you ever get that to work on your drives?


							Nathan
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