Wow this has caused quite the stirrup!

I think I'll leave them spinning :-) They are WD Raid Edition drives
so I'll keep my fingers crossed. I just figured since the array does
nothing like 21 hours of the day.. why not spin it down. But if
spinup/downs are worse then I'll leave it be.

The drive temps are 32-34 degrees since they have fans right on them
and the case is nicely cooled.

Thanks,
Greg




On Sun, May 4, 2008 at 8:04 PM, Bill Davidsen [off-list ref] wrote:

berk walker wrote:

quoted

Bill Davidsen wrote:

quoted

Greg Cormier wrote:

quoted

Is it possible to sleep hard drives in an array?

I have a HTPC at home that's on 24x7. It does all my torrenting as
well, and is mainly a media server.

Can I sleep the drives in my RAID5 array while it's not being used?
It's an XFS partition.

I have each drive set as

hdparm -S240 /dev/sdX

But I'm fairly sure they are not spinning down :( Is there some
activity mdadm is doing in the background?

These things are probably idle 22 hours of the day.

I have several very similar systems, and I note that on one the disk

light blinks every five sec or so, while the others don't do that. The one
that blinks is the only one running LVM, all the others were partitioned by
hand. Does that apply to your system, LVM in use?

quoted

quoted

Geez!!  pardon me if I don't either "get it" or am unable to communicate

about "it".  Those thinking that I'm un-necessarily repeating myself - email
your flames and I will be gone from here for a few months.

quoted

Put / [and whatever ELSE that needs to be mounted] on a USB drive.  I

recently got a 2Gb drive for pocket change!!

quoted

Learn, or borrow someone who knows how - scripts. I don't think that you

would give a darn if a ram-drive didn't "spin-down".  So PUT what can not be
put to sleep on something that doesn't have mechanical wear!!!

quoted

Your system can be set up to WAKE up with everything mounted and ready to

go on ANY trigger/situation that YOU want - except the states need to be
either on or off... there are lots of states that newer 'puters monitor.
I'm sorry but THIS is not rocket science.

quoted

NOW!!  YOU FAILED TO RESPOND!!  To my earlier response to you.  Please

allow me to ax you again....  WHY do you want spin-down?  HMMM

quoted

 a - I didn't, the original poster did
 b - his question was why it didn't spin down, so the WHY is irrelevant
 c - none of the comments below are relevant to why his array won't spin
down

quoted

   Less noise-    - buy new drives
   Less elect. co$t - If they aren't seeking, draw is LOW
   Less wear on the drives - I have never had a drive mfg respond

to my questions about this.  My [totally personal] view             on this
is if you're shutting down for a few hr., you                 will lose,
weeks will win.

quoted

 Rest of post snipped, also not related to why the array won't spin down.
The point about drive wear could be addresses by looking for studies of
same, it appears the bearing failures are related to POH, positioning errors
to total seeks, and electronic failures to power cycles. The data I have is
some years old, but I doubt that's changed, but it's not relevant to the
spin down issue.

 And no one seems to have answered to my query on use of LVM causing
frequest access.



 --
 Bill Davidsen [off-list ref]
  "Woe unto the statesman who makes war without a reason that will still
  be valid when the war is over..." Otto von Bismark