Ultra 4 Plus spin down question

Hi Steve,
I am sorry!
It is know issue, there is no specific date to fix it yet.

So this is a known issue with the Ultra 4 Plus that all four drives do not spin down? I just want to make sure I'm understanding your response correctly. I don't intend any disrespect but this seems like a very basic issue for a NAS drive. What's the problem?

I'll second Steve. I have exactly the same thing going on. Disk 1,2 spindown and Disk 3,4 keep running. I also have the exact same kind of drives as Steve. Sure hope there is fix soon. I hate to have the drives spinning all the time. In fact this was the MAIN reason I chose ReadyNAS. My last NAS was a Patriot Valkyrie. My drives spun themselves to death in under a year. :x

Although my NAS is situated in a very well ventilated area, until a fix is announced I have started shutting down the NAS when I shut down my computer or know that I will not be using the system for longer periods of time. Obviously this is a pain but I cannot afford, as rlkyle points out, to have these drives spin themselves to death prematurely. I don't believe this was an issue with the Ultra 2 Plus that I upgraded from but that was my first NAS and I may not have been paying as much attention to the spin down of the drives. I too hope a fix comes down soon.

I had Spin Down set to 15 minutes on my NVX for a while, but the delay in accessing it was a real PITA. So, I turned of Spin Down. My Hitache 3TB drives in my prime NAS have been running (with few exceptions) 24/7 for the last year since they were installed without any problems. There are two in there along with two Seagate 1TB drives, one of which has been running for 24/7 for almost two years.

Now, on my backup NVX, (also with two Hitachi 3TB and two Seagate 1TB drives) I do have Spin Down set to kick in after 90 minutes. So it is up from roughly midnight when the backup jobs kick in to around 5:30 AM which is about 90 minutes after the last backup job runs. Oh, both units are set to run disk scrubbing weekly which is basically a scheduled resync of the drives which takes about 10 hours of intensive disk activity.

Actually, even in the PC envior0nment, there are two schools of thought. One is to leave the PC on so that the drive is spinning consistently at it's normal speed as it is easier than the start up/shut down action on the drives by turning off the PC all the time vs turning off the PC if your not going to use it for 15 minutes to save electricity and drive wear. The points on both sides have been around for almost as long as we have had hard drives in our PC's.

In my NV+ (now rehomed) which I first set up 5 years ago had two hard drives in it at the start. On of those drives ran for over three years 24/7 and had well over 25,000 hours on it when it was removed to install larger drives. The other drive failed within the first month, but was replaced with one of the same model and it ran for the next three years, also logging over 25,000 hours before also being replaced with a larger drive.

PapaBear wrote:

Actually, even in the PC envior0nment, there are two schools of thought. One is to leave the PC on so that the drive is spinning consistently at it's normal speed as it is easier than the start up/shut down action on the drives by turning off the PC all the time vs turning off the PC if your not going to use it for 15 minutes to save electricity and drive wear. The points on both sides have been around for almost as long as we have had hard drives in our PC's.

This.

Thank you for the replies, I understand the concept of leaving a device (hard drive) on all the time rather than putting it through the shock of a full shut down/turn on sequence as this same sort of logic exists in my world of consumer electronics integration - leaving amplifiers fully on or at least in standby mode rather than powered fully off, TiVo drives never sleep and last years so what you are saying makes sense and I stand corrected in my previous comment about shutting down the NAS daily. The other thing I thought about with regards to a full shut down is that I'm shutting down four drives that are running around 95 degrees and I'm also shutting down the cooling fan leaving the drives to cool passively. Probably not a good thing, correct?

So for further clarification relating to disc longevity, is putting a drive to "sleep" and waking it back up daily any different than performing a full shut down/turn on.

Finally, does anyone know why there is an issue with the sleep function of the Ultra 4 Plus? Just curious.

Thanks again,