Provided by: hdparm_9.65+ds-1_amd64 bug

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 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  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 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, 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 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
              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 fragmentation 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 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 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.

       --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.   Note
              that  some  information  will be incomplete, as the drive LOG PAGES are unavailable
              when --Istdin is used.

       --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 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
              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  (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 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 (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 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 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
              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.

       --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 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 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 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 drive's 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 (you'll
              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 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 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 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
              execution.

       --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) doesn't 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.