hdparm(8)


NAME

   hdparm - get/set SATA/IDE device parameters

SYNOPSIS

   hdparm [options] [device ...]

DESCRIPTION

   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

   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  drives 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 kernels "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.

   --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  drives "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 drives 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 drives  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   Linuxs
          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 drives 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 (youll 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  drives  "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

   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 drives 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-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

   /etc/hdparm.conf

BUGS

   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)  doesnt  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

   hdparm has been written by Mark Lord  <mlord@pobox.com>,  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(tomilepp@paju.oulu.fi).

   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

   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.





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