Hello,
usually when I forcefully plug out external HDD, it will make a specific kind of sound, let’s call this sound a scream for this post.
If I remember correctly, back when I’m still using win7 which is long time ago, when I want to unplug HDD, I had to click safely remove hardware so that the HDD will be plugged out in peace with no scream.
For a long time, I haven’t had external HDD. Now that I do, it always makes that screaming sound everytime I unplug it even if I already unmount the partition or using safely remove HDD from the gnome extension. It even scream when I turned off my laptop in the normal way while my external HDD still plugged in.
This scares me. What is the proper way to unplug external HDD?
Oh and while we are talking about HDD, I have sub question. Do internal HDD in HDD caddy of a laptop will drain power when they are not mounted at all?
The “scream” is probably the HDD’s protection mechanism, when it loses power:
The read/write head of the HDD is essentially floating on an air cushion just a tiny distance from the platter. If it loses power, the head would risk crashing into the platter (destroying the drive). As a protection on power loss, a HDD will use the rotational energy of the platters to move the head to its parking position, where it is safe. So the scream is ok.
The reason why you did not hear it when using Windows, was probably Windows telling the drive to stop spinning after unmounting. From your report, it sounds like your Linux install is never telling the drive to properly stop spinning (although I have no clue on how to fix that).
If it is mounted or not has probably very little effect on the drives power usage. It will use more power, when it is spinning than when it is not, and even more power when it is spinning up. If it is not spinning, it’s power draw should probably have little effect on your laptops battery usage.
