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HDPARM(8)                              System Manager's Manual                             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 there‐
       fore may also work with hdparm.  E.g., recent WD "Passport" models and recent  NexStar-3  en‐
       closures.  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  drive's 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 set‐
              tings 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 at‐
              tained 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 sup‐
              port, 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 combina‐
              tions 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,  al‐
              though  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  dis‐
              abled  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  ac‐
              cept 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 kernel's "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, us‐
              ing 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 per‐
              formed 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
              kibibytes (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 10 kibibyte file: hdparm --fallocate 10 temp_file

       --fibmap
              When  used,  this must be the only option given.  It requires a file path as a parame‐
              ter, 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 sec‐
              tor 0 of the physical device rather than from the partition or filesystem.   This  in‐
              formation  can then be used for a variety of purposes, such as examining the degree of
              fragmentation of larger files, or determining appropriate sectors to deliberately cor‐
              rupt 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 8 TB or 16 TB.  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 sup‐
              ports it, transfer protocol 3 (segmented download).  This command is EXTREMELY DANGER‐‐
              OUS 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 tempera‐
              ture 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  in‐
              terpretation  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.   Usu‐
              ally 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  ex‐
              panded format with considerably more detail than with the older -i option.

       --Iraw <pathname>
              This option dumps the drive's identify data in raw binary to the specified file.

       --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 prema‐
              ture 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 re‐
              covery  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  drive's  "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 drive's 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 automati‐
              cally, 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 (32 KiB) 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 sup‐
              port  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 DAN‐‐
              GEROUS.  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 op‐
              tion.   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_UN‐
              CORRECTABLE_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 sub‐
              sequent 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, in‐
              cluding 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 possi‐
              ble  values  are between 0 and 254. 128 is the most quiet (and therefore slowest) set‐
              ting 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 incor‐
              porated for future expansion, should this change.

       -n     Get or set the "ignore_write_errors" flag in the driver.  Do NOT play with this  with‐
              out 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
              (e.g., most current {2010} BIOSs cannot deal with drives larger than 2 TB, so  an  HPA
              could  be used to cause a 3 TB drive to report itself as a 2 TB 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 re‐
              set, 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 pre‐
              vent 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  sup‐
              ported  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 sophisti‐
              cation.  Use with extreme caution!  This feature includes zero protection for the  un‐
              wary, and an unsuccessful outcome may result in severe filesystem corruption!

       -P     Set  the  maximum  sector  count for the drive's 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 out‐
              put.  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  DAN‐‐
              GEROUS.   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  ac‐‐
              tive 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 ef‐
              fect.

       -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 subse‐
              quent 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 ven‐
              dor-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.

       --set-sector-size
              For drives which support reconfiguring of the Logical Sector Size, this  flag  can  be
              used  to  specify  the  new  desired  sector size in bytes.  VERY DANGEROUS. This most
              likely will scramble all data on the drive.  The specified size must be  one  of  512,
              520,  528,  4096,  4160,  or  4224.  Very few drives support values other than 512 and
              4096.  Eg.  hdparm --set-sector-size 4096 /dev/sdb

       -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 accu‐
              rate 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  ac‐
              cess.   This measurement is essentially an indication of the throughput of the proces‐
              sor, 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 imme‐
              diately  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 trans‐
              fer 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
              Linux's responsiveness and eliminates "serial port overrun" errors.  Use this  feature
              with caution: some drive/controller combinations do not tolerate the increased I/O la‐
              tencies possible when this feature is enabled, resulting in massive filesystem corrup‐‐
              tion.   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 drive's write-caching feature.

       -X     Set the IDE transfer mode for (E)IDE/ATA drives.  This is typically used  in  combina‐
              tion  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 tim‐
              ings, -X udma2 is used to select UltraDMA mode2 transfers (you'll need to prepare  the
              chipset  for UltraDMA beforehand).  Apart from that, use of this option is seldom nec‐‐
              essary 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 re‐
              stores the drive's "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 de‐
              sired UltraDMA mode number plus 64.

       -y     Force an IDE drive to immediately enter the low power consumption standby  mode,  usu‐
              ally  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, caus‐
              ing 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 mod‐
              els?), 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 drive's 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-prompt-for-password
              Prompt for the --security PWD rather than getting from the command  line  args.   This
              avoids  having passwords show up in shell history or in /proc/self/cmdline during exe‐
              cution.

       --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 pass‐
              word 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) doesn't handle the security unlock and
       disable commands gracefully and will segfault and in some cases even panic. The security com‐
       mands  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 com‐
       mand 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 AT 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    Leppikan‐
       gas(tomilepp AT paju.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.



Version 9.60                                November 2020                                  HDPARM(8)
hdparm(8)
NAME SYNOPSIS DESCRIPTION OPTIONS
-R1 (enable). This feature is intended to have the drive firmware automatically read- ATA Security Feature Set AT YOUR OWN RISK.
FILES BUGS AUTHOR SEE ALSO

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