Mount NTFS from "Live" system?

[Polytropon]

On Thu, 30 Nov 2017 13:10:55 -0800, Ronald F. Guilmette wrote:
> What I never knew till today was that any of the "blue" drives would self-idle.
> 
> Does that only happen on the 2.5" "laptop" ones?

I have a WD Blue 3.5" 2TB disk which does not seem to exhibit
this behaviour. Maybe an older firmware version prior to the
"green IT" move? I don't have Blue 2.5" (only SSDs) in laptops
so I cannot counter-check.



> Anyway, yea, I can see how this could possibly cause problems in the case of
> *nix systems.  (And it is annoying to me generally when my various tech toys
> start thinking that they are smarter than I am, and making decisions for me,
> especially those that I would not have made myself.)

Get used to it - this will be the default of all "modern" items
you will be able to purchase. In worst case, they come with a
lower-level "know everything better than you" firmware that
cannot be accessed or controlled from the OS. It doesn' matter
if it's present in CPUs, mainboards, or hard disks; even cars,
TVs, desk phones or heaters can be affected... :-(



> I'm gonna try to see if I can disable this "feature" on this specific drive
> and then see If I can maybe get it to complete the self test... which it did
> not do the last time I tried.

You can use smartctl to dump the capabilities and settings list
of a drive to verify that setting.



> But one would think/hope that even if the drive was set to auto-idle, it would
> at least have enough brains/courtesy not to fall asleep in the middle of a
> built-in firmware self-test.  But maybe not.  And maybe this drive is not
> actually broke after all.

Why not? "Bricked by firmware update" is nothing unusual in our
"modern" "smart" time anymore. ;-)



> However if your SSDs ever -do- start to spin, then you've got a real
> problem on your hands. :-)

If you put SSDs into an ATL and handle them like tape cartridges,
well, floating, sliding and spinning becomes normal. :-)



-- 
Polytropon
Magdeburg, Germany
Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0
Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ...