Unable to change power mode settings.

[Niuj79]

I have two Seagate SkyHawk ST2000VX008 hard drives, and i cannot change anything in power modes. According to --showEPCSettings, non of the modes can be changed or saved. How to unlock these settings?
Disk are working under Debian, kernel version 5.10

root@xxxxxxxxx~# openSeaChest_PowerControl -d /dev/sde --showEPCSettings
==========================================================================================
openSeaChest_PowerControl - openSeaChest drive utilities - NVMe Enabled
Copyright (c) 2014-2018 Seagate Technology LLC and/or its Affiliates, All Rights Reserved
openSeaChest_PowerControl Version: 1.10.0-1_19_0 X86_64
Build Date: Apr 23 2022
Today: Sat Apr 23 16:26:21 2022
==========================================================================================

/dev/sg4 - ST2000VX008-2E3164 - Z52A645Q - ATA
.

===EPC Settings===
* = timer is enabled
C column = Changeable
S column = Saveable
All times are in 100 milliseconds

Name Current Timer Default Timer Saved Timer Recovery Time C S
Idle A *100 *100 *100 70 N N
Idle B 0 0 0 220 N N
Idle C 0 0 0 2300 N N
Standby Z *18000 0 0 4800 N N

[vonericsen]

Hi @Niuj79,

What is the output from the -i option and the --showAPMLevel option?

[Niuj79]

Hi @vonericsen

Output from --showAPMelevel is

/dev/sg4 - ST2000VX008-2E3164 - Z52A645Q - ATA
Showing APM Level is not supported on this device.

Output from -i is

/dev/sg4 - ST2000VX008-2E3164 - Z52A645Q - ATA
Model Number: ST2000VX008-2E3164
Serial Number: Z52A645Q
Firmware Revision: CV12
World Wide Name: 5000C500C62A4256
Drive Capacity (TB/TiB): 2.00/1.82
Native Drive Capacity (TB/TiB): 2.00/1.82
Temperature Data:
Current Temperature (C): 29
Highest Temperature (C): 30
Lowest Temperature (C): 16
Power On Time: 102 days 13 hours
Power On Hours: 8605.00
MaxLBA: 3907029167
Native MaxLBA: 3907029167
Logical Sector Size (B): 512
Physical Sector Size (B): 4096
Sector Alignment: 0
Rotation Rate (RPM): 5900
Form Factor (inch): 3.5
Last DST information:
DST has never been run
Long Drive Self Test Time: 4 hours 14 minutes
Interface speed:
Max Speed (Gb/s): 6.0
Negotiated Speed (Gb/s): 6.0
Annualized Workload Rate (TB/yr): Not Reported
Total Bytes Read (B): Not Reported
Total Bytes Written (B): Not Reported
Encryption Support: Not Supported
Cache Size (MiB): 64.00
Read Look-Ahead: Enabled
Write Cache: Disabled
Low Current Spinup: Disabled
SMART Status: Good
ATA Security Information: Supported
Firmware Download Support: Full, Segmented
Specifications Supported:
ACS-2
ATA8-ACS
ATA/ATAPI-7
ATA/ATAPI-6
ATA/ATAPI-5
ATA/ATAPI-4
SATA 3.1
SATA 3.0
SATA 2.6
SATA 2.5
SATA II: Extensions
SATA 1.0a
Features Supported:
SATA NCQ
SATA Software Settings Preservation [Enabled]
SATA Device Initiated Power Management
HPA
Power Management
Security
SMART [Enabled]
DCO
48bit Address
PUIS [Enabled]
GPL
Streaming
SMART Self-Test
SMART Error Logging
Write-Read-Verify
EPC [Enabled]
Sense Data Reporting [Enabled]
SCT Error Recovery Control
SCT Feature Control
SCT Data Tables
Host Logging
Seagate In Drive Diagnostics (IDD)

[vonericsen]

Hi @Niuj79,

This took a bit of searching and asking questions to figure out.
The drive in your case is working according to the T13 (ATA) specs for the EPC feature, but it is saying what the timers are, just not allowing changes. The spec allows a device to choose whether the timers are changeable or not and in this case, this drive does not allow making any changes.

This is enforced by the firmware on the drive, so I asked around and it sounds like on Skyhawk drives this is intentional to not allow changes to the timers. I was able to confirm this on a Skyhawk drive that I tracked down. On the IronWolf and Exos drives I tested these were set to be changeable. Please be aware that I often work with engineering samples so they may not reflect final firmware configurations, although we do our best to match customer firmware as often as we can.

Unfortunately in your case, there is not a way to make these changeable since it is set by the device firmware to restrict this behavior in this configuration.