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Forum Discussion
Spin Up, Spin Down
GDay All,
I have just installed an RND4000 V3 ReadyNAS NV+ onto my network. After some intial problems (My Fault) I managed to get everything working as expected. Then I decided to turn on the spin down function where the drives spin down after 15 mins of inactivity. The problem is that the ReadyNAS continually spins up even when I know there is no-one accessing it. It is usually accompanied by the fan running at full speed which is how I know the drives have spun up.
Anyone have any idea why this is happening?
Another issue is the upload/download speeds, but I will ask about that in performance.
My specs:
Main computer: Realtek Gigabit NIC (Built-In Asus Sabertooth X58)
Netgear CG3000 Gigabit Cable Modem/Router (Optus).
3x Seagate ST2000DL003-9VT166 [1862 GB]
1x Hitachi HDS722020ALA330 [1862 GB]
I have just installed an RND4000 V3 ReadyNAS NV+ onto my network. After some intial problems (My Fault) I managed to get everything working as expected. Then I decided to turn on the spin down function where the drives spin down after 15 mins of inactivity. The problem is that the ReadyNAS continually spins up even when I know there is no-one accessing it. It is usually accompanied by the fan running at full speed which is how I know the drives have spun up.
Anyone have any idea why this is happening?
Another issue is the upload/download speeds, but I will ask about that in performance.
My specs:
Main computer: Realtek Gigabit NIC (Built-In Asus Sabertooth X58)
Netgear CG3000 Gigabit Cable Modem/Router (Optus).
3x Seagate ST2000DL003-9VT166 [1862 GB]
1x Hitachi HDS722020ALA330 [1862 GB]
12 Replies
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- It does have some background jobs which check the disk smart status, and maybe some other things. Also, the OS is stored on the drives, so whenever the OS has a page fault, it will spin up as well.
- Thanks Stephen, I never thought of that. I've turned off the spin down feature, it was driving me nuts with the fan and all ... lol
I'll leave it off, I'm not too worried if I drop a drive, it's raid afterall ... lol - Still, if the disks spin up and down, you'll "wear" them out faster. So leaving them constantly on, is more healthy than making em spin up and down all the time
- Opinions differ on that. On the one hand spinning the disks up and down the disks are in use for less time which might help extend their life and would save on power. However as you mentioned spinning them up and down a lot might reduce their life.
I've heard that said, and also heard the opposite - under the theory that the bearings wear when the drives are spinning.Slasky wrote: Still, if the disks spin up and down, you'll "wear" them out faster. So leaving them constantly on, is more healthy than making em spin up and down all the time
I've never seen any data to support the wear them out faster idea.
If you look at Seagate Barracuda specs the drives < 1 TB are spec'd at 50K start/stop cycles, drives >= 1 TB re spec'd at 300K load cycles. If you set the spin down time conservatively to 2 hours then you get at most 12 spin ups a day. Even the 50K spec would take 11 years to exceed.- Well that's true. I have Caviar green disks on my setups, and those spin down much faster than 2 hours. I had a load cycle count near 100k within a few weeks on my Duo before I disabled the spin-down timer.
If it doesn't spin down before its been 2 hours, then it wouldn't be that much of a problem, no :) - Many green disks spin down on their own (and their algorithm seems tuned to Windows PCs) - which is why the load cycle count grows so quickly. For those disks it will grow no matter what the spin-down timer is. wdidle3 can help (though perhaps risky).
And that will still save power. Spinning up also creates quite a bit of delay before your data is available, so in my view relatively long spin down times are the right balance.Slasky wrote: If it doesn't spin down before its been 2 hours, then it wouldn't be that much of a problem, no :) - I used wdidle3, and it worked on that problem. My load cycle count stopped almost immediately to grow after I shut of the spin-down function. The disks have been going for almost 3 years now without showing sign of giving up yet :)
- IMHO frequent spin up/down cycles for hard drives is akin to frequent on/off switching of incandescent light bulbs. There's an inrush of current to start (in this case a motor) and especially if the motor is already hot, this can't possibly be good for it. My bias and I'm sticking to it! ;)
BTW I tried getting spin up/down working on my NV+ to no avail. At least, there were WAY TOO MANY times when a spin-down was accompanied by an immediate spin-up again, way too many for my comfort. But I only use my ReadyNAS for backup of my PCs, for an hour each day, so instead have them off by time-of-day schedule instead.
Data Center Raid Drives generally stay spun up, since they can't afford the spin-up lag. Since most drive reliability data comes from studying data centers, there isn't hard data.maxblack wrote: IMHO frequent spin up/down cycles for hard drives is akin to frequent on/off switching of incandescent light bulbs. There's an inrush of current to start (in this case a motor) and especially if the motor is already hot, this can't possibly be good for it. My bias and I'm sticking to it! ;)
My own "bias" is a bit more complex. I agree that spinning up a motor stresses the bearings. Keeping the motor spinning also wears the bearings (although not nearly so much). So I think there is a balance point (where leaving the drive spun down for X hours creates less wear than the subsequent spin up). But I have no idea what X is.
Since there isn't much real data, we can stick with our biases without much challenge. :)
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