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WD20EARS drives not spinning down automatically

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I have a ton of these WD20EARS drives and I ran the wdidle3 app against them so they wouldn't have the heads parking all the time... Did the preclear and that went great..everything's working well...BUT - The drives never spin down.

 

If I go into unmenu and select a disk and tell it to spin down, it spins down - and I can go back into the main lime tech menu and the green ball is flashing...but, it never seems to do this on its own.  

 

Am I missing a config someplace or is there a place I can see if the function is even being sent to the drive to spin down?  My setting in unraid is set to 1 hr spindown...but they seem to always stay awake...

 

Pete

Try disabling spin up groups (on the settings page).  Also, consider installing cache_dirs if you haven't already.

  • Author

I haven't enabled spinup groups, so that should be safe...can try out cache dirs...

  • Author

Didn't seem to do the trick...drives were unused for at least 24 hrs and continued to be spinning...

  • 3 weeks later...
  • Author

Does anyone have any other ideas on this one?  Should I actually go in and re-enable the western digital WDIDLE3 functions to get this thing to park once in awhile?  Literally the drives will spin continuously. 

 

I know the spindown will work manually, so it leads me to believe there's nothing outside of the unraid server, nor any scheduled process on the server, that is keeping the drives active...but once they get accessed, they spin up and stay spinning..

 

I can provide any other details that may help track this down...

Pete

Does anyone have any other ideas on this one?  Should I actually go in and re-enable the western digital WDIDLE3 functions to get this thing to park once in awhile?  Literally the drives will spin continuously.  

 

I know the spindown will work manually, so it leads me to believe there's nothing outside of the unraid server, nor any scheduled process on the server, that is keeping the drives active...but once they get accessed, they spin up and stay spinning..

 

I can provide any other details that may help track this down...

Pete

 

Well, for troubleshooting and problem isolation, I think it's viable to change your WDIDLE3 back and confirm that is the root of your issue... then go from there.

  • Author

Well, I know the WDIDLE will park the heads...but when I set it, i disabed it entirely, thinking unraid would handle things...but perhaps I need to set an extended time to force it to happen again...

 

Is it possible to see spindown attempts by the OS in logging, to verify it's even trying to spin the drives down on its own?

 

Pete

Well, I know the WDIDLE will park the heads...but when I set it, i disabed it entirely, thinking unraid would handle things...but perhaps I need to set an extended time to force it to happen again...

 

Is it possible to see spindown attempts by the OS in logging, to verify it's even trying to spin the drives down on its own?

 

Pete

 

On my 4.7 system, there are syslog entries for spindown.

 

Apr 28 17:18:37 unRAID emhttp: Spinning up all drives...

Apr 28 17:18:37 unRAID kernel: mdcmd (13): spinup 0

Apr 28 17:18:37 unRAID kernel: mdcmd (14): spinup 1

Apr 28 17:18:37 unRAID kernel: mdcmd (15): spinup 2

Apr 28 17:18:37 unRAID kernel: mdcmd (16): spinup 3

 

....

 

Apr 28 23:59:52 unRAID kernel: mdcmd (30): spindown 4

Apr 29 00:11:55 unRAID kernel: mdcmd (31): spindown 6

 

 

etc...

  • Author

I'm running the latest beta, and this is what I see when I force a spindown.

 

May  3 15:48:36 NAS1 emhttp: Spinning down all drives...

May  3 15:48:36 NAS1 kernel: mdcmd (46): spindown 0

May  3 15:48:37 NAS1 kernel: mdcmd (47): spindown 1

May  3 15:48:37 NAS1 kernel: mdcmd (48): spindown 2

May  3 15:48:37 NAS1 kernel: mdcmd (49): spindown 3

May  3 15:48:38 NAS1 kernel: mdcmd (50): spindown 4

May  3 15:48:39 NAS1 kernel: mdcmd (51): spindown 5

 

When i go to use a drive, i don't see any spinup command in the syslog..and never see any spindown attempts on these drive either.  But since May 3rd i have 3 drives still in spindown, so I'm confused - how do I track down why unraid isn't even trying to send a sleep command to these drives...is there a sleep command I need to schedule, or this an enabled feature that isn't enabled somehow? 

 

On bootup I see this:

Apr 16 07:34:24 NAS1 kernel: mdcmd (25): set spinup_group 0 0

Apr 16 07:34:24 NAS1 kernel: mdcmd (26): set spinup_group 1 0

Apr 16 07:34:24 NAS1 kernel: mdcmd (27): set spinup_group 2 0

Apr 16 07:34:24 NAS1 kernel: mdcmd (28): set spinup_group 3 0

Apr 16 07:34:24 NAS1 kernel: mdcmd (29): set spinup_group 4 0

Apr 16 07:34:24 NAS1 kernel: mdcmd (30): set spinup_group 5 0

...so I'm guessing this means that no drives are in a spinup group...

 

Pete

  • 2 weeks later...
  • Author

Does anyone else with the WD20EARS drive have spindown working correctly on the latest beta release?  If so, how do you have WDIDLE configured on your drives? 

 

Pete

  • Author

Thanks John, I'll give it a try, setting the drives off of 'use default' and to individual spindown times and we'll see how it goes

  • Author

..and that did it!  All the drives are spinning down now.  Thank you!!!

 

...and one more "!"

 

Been dealing with this for weeks now...good to have wrapped up.

Good to hear. it has worked for me also.

 

Maybe we can get this thread moved to the version 5 bug area so it they can see this as a "known bug" and a working "work around" so they can look into it.

Done.  petebnas, if you ever need to seek help in the future, always make it very clear in the first post that you are using the beta version of unRAID, otherwise we'll assume you are using the latest stable.

This must be a change between 5.0b6 and b6a, then.  All my drives spin up and down correctly (having forced an initial spindown immediately after installation).

  • 2 years later...

I'm still having this problem with one of my 7 WDC_WD20EARS disks. I've tried what has worked for other people, but with no luck. Anyone got other ideas? or should I just replace it, as it's getting pretty old?

  • 11 months later...

I have the same Problem in v6b12. Only my wd Drives won't spin down... I'll try the workaround but can't be a solution.

Ok thanks! Does that mean that i have to set the diskSpindownDelay in the disk.cfg to 3? Is the delaytime the time hdparm -s X is using to spin down the drives?

 

In other versions, i havend had this problem with the same drives.

 

For me, it's not only that the drive isn spinning down, my whole server wont sleep automaticly. And i think im not the only person who has this problem.

Ok thanks! Does that mean that i have to set the diskSpindownDelay in the disk.cfg to 3? Is the delaytime the time hdparm -s X is using to spin down the drives?

 

In other versions, i havend had this problem with the same drives.

 

For me, it's not only that the drive isn spinning down, my whole server wont sleep automaticly. And i think im not the only person who has this problem.

 

The link supplied is more of an issue for people who have drives that are not part of the array and use the hdparm -S function.

emhttp uses hdparm -y to force spindown when it sees no activty for a while.

 

Perhaps clear the statistics on emhttp.

Then come back after the appropriate time has occurred and see if read or write numbers have increased on the respective questionable drives.

 

But whats the difference between pushing the "Spin Down" Button and the auto sleep? When i push the button, the drives go to sleep and stay there.

 

PS: How do i clear the statistics on emhttp?

Have this Problem since yesterday with my WD20EARS too - tried all mentioned things, but no luck - drive wont spin down  :(

I am using unRAID v5.0.6

But whats the difference between pushing the "Spin Down" Button and the auto sleep? When i push the button, the drives go to sleep and stay there.

One is triggered by the spin down button, the auto sleep function is based on lack of activity for the specified period of time.

When no activity exists on the device, the spindown is initiated.

 

PS: How do i clear the statistics on emhttp?

 

There's a button in unRAID v5 on the front page called [Clear Statistics] will immediately clear all disk statistics.

Just a smale info regarding the WD20EARS: I found out, that this problem (no spindown) only occures, if the default spindown is set to 15min.

If it is set to 30min, the WD20EARS goes to sleep normal.

Maybe this Info is helpfull for someone.

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