Hard drive spins down, Flex 4K cannot playback

[nwwoods]

Unit: Flex 4K
Device ID: 10A2ED19
External hard drive in a USB 3.0 SATA enclosure
Send Diagnostic Info is turned on

When the hard drive has spun down due to inactivity, but Flex 4K hasn't yet attempted a recording, one can open the app and see the index of recorded programs. If one browses into a particular program, and then selects a recording within that program, it fails to play.

I see a "Loading..." dialogue for several seconds and can hear the hard drive spinning up, but it doesn't load heads and come online before the software times out, and the screen returns to the index for that program, except it doesn't show any available recordings.

If I exit from that program's recordings to the Recordings index, and then go back in, all the recordings appear, and if I select one at this point, it plays fine, as the hard drive is now available.

So, it seems like the hard drive is losing some sort of race condition on the first attempt to play, that messes up the recording list, but upon navigating back out and back in again, all is well. Obviously I have a workaround but it's a less than ideal user experience.

As mentioned in a previous topic, this is caused by the hard drive enclosure spinning the drive down due to inactivity, but there's no way to stop it from doing that.

[NedS]

Do you have a model/brand or product link for that enclosure, by any chance? Nick might want to try replicating the hardware set up.

[nwwoods]

I have tried two USB 3.0 3.5 inch enclosures, both behave the same, the drive spins down after some time (< 12h) I haven't rigorously monitored it to see when it spins down. I just discover it when shows don't record.

GODO: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0B9MVWFRG
Inateck: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00UAA4J6G

Windows has a setting for controlling hard drive spin-down (in Control Panel | Hardware | Power | Edit Plan | Advanced) but it applies to all drives connected, you can't just connect the one and tweak its settings.

Linux (and other distributions) have hdparm but I can't find options in it for power management.

[nickk]

I ordered a GODO to test.