Spin down USB external harddrive enclosure

[ruihere]

Hi,

 

I have a mini pc , and I use a USB 3.1 external harddrive enclosure to add more storage. I saw my internal hard drive spins down correctly, however, my harddrive on USB enclosure never spins down? 

 

thanks

[MAM59]

This is nothing UNRAID can do for you.

The disk is under control of the control from your enclosure.

The better of them handle spindown themselfs, the cheaper of them not at all.

Unless meantioened in the specs of the device, its pure luck to buy a good one.

I know of "WD Book" types that spin down fine (with a seperate setting), but they also only take WD (Red) Disks and refuse other brands/types.

 

 

[kypu]

@MAM59

What do you mean with "seperate settings"?
I have like the same issue but my WD my Book are going well in standby because of the controller on the case.
I did it with the regular software "WD Drive Utilitys" and have set the spin down to 10 minutes.

But i have the issue every 15 minutes the unnassigned WD drive awakes for no reason (not even mounted etc.).
I'm actually troubleshooting this but maybe i have to open a new case here.
The same model on my windows host, stays in standby.
Thats why i think something in unraid is awaking the device for some reason.
But the syslog is quiet at the moment when the USB drive spinns up, so i have no clue where to start to troubleshoot this issue.

After all when this HUB spinns down, in unraid it is still marked as online (green LED) but im pretty sure out of the noise and energy consumption it has spin down.
I can clarify this by screenshots etc.

Maybe someone have the same issue and can help me out?

[ruihere]

I am using MediaSonic HUR5-SU31C, 2 Bay Proraid USB 3.1 Type-C, it supports spin down. but somehow they are not

[SimonF]

12 hours ago, kypu said:

@MAM59

What do you mean with "seperate settings"?
I have like the same issue but my WD my Book are going well in standby because of the controller on the case.
I did it with the regular software "WD Drive Utilitys" and have set the spin down to 10 minutes.

But i have the issue every 15 minutes the unnassigned WD drive awakes for no reason (not even mounted etc.).
I'm actually troubleshooting this but maybe i have to open a new case here.
The same model on my windows host, stays in standby.
Thats why i think something in unraid is awaking the device for some reason.
But the syslog is quiet at the moment when the USB drive spinns up, so i have no clue where to start to troubleshoot this issue.

After all when this HUB spinns down, in unraid it is still marked as online (green LED) but im pretty sure out of the noise and energy consumption it has spin down.
I can clarify this by screenshots etc.

Maybe someone have the same issue and can help me out?

Unraid thinks drive is active so will call smartctl based on poll timer.

 

what output do you get for hdparm -C /dev/sdx for usb drive and smartctl -n standby /dev/sdx

[ruihere]

@SimonF here is my output:

 

root@Tower:~# hdparm -C /dev/sdb

/dev/sdb:
 drive state is:  standby
root@Tower:~# hdparm -C /dev/sdc

/dev/sdc:
 drive state is:  standby
root@Tower:~# smartctl -n standby /dev/sdb
smartctl 7.3 2022-02-28 r5338 [x86_64-linux-5.15.40-Unraid] (local build)
Copyright (C) 2002-22, Bruce Allen, Christian Franke, www.smartmontools.org

Device is in STANDBY mode, exit(2)
root@Tower:~# smartctl -n standby /dev/sdc
smartctl 7.3 2022-02-28 r5338 [x86_64-linux-5.15.40-Unraid] (local build)
Copyright (C) 2002-22, Bruce Allen, Christian Franke, www.smartmontools.org

Device is in STANDBY mode, exit(2)
root@Tower:~# 

 

[ruihere]

I also checked the system log, my SATA harddrive has the spindown record:

 

May 20 06:50:11 Tower emhttpd: read SMART /dev/sdd
May 20 07:20:12 Tower emhttpd: spinning down /dev/sdd
May 20 10:00:53 Tower emhttpd: read SMART /dev/sdd
May 20 10:32:31 Tower emhttpd: spinning down /dev/sdd
May 20 11:05:28 Tower emhttpd: read SMART /dev/sdd
May 20 11:37:28 Tower emhttpd: spinning down /dev/sdd
May 20 15:16:21 Tower emhttpd: read SMART /dev/sdd
May 20 15:48:42 Tower emhttpd: spinning down /dev/sdd
May 20 18:12:23 Tower emhttpd: read SMART /dev/sdd
May 20 18:49:27 Tower emhttpd: spinning down /dev/sdd

 

[SimonF]

5 hours ago, ruihere said:

@SimonF here is my output:

 

root@Tower:~# hdparm -C /dev/sdb

/dev/sdb:
 drive state is:  standby
root@Tower:~# hdparm -C /dev/sdc

/dev/sdc:
 drive state is:  standby
root@Tower:~# smartctl -n standby /dev/sdb
smartctl 7.3 2022-02-28 r5338 [x86_64-linux-5.15.40-Unraid] (local build)
Copyright (C) 2002-22, Bruce Allen, Christian Franke, www.smartmontools.org

Device is in STANDBY mode, exit(2)
root@Tower:~# smartctl -n standby /dev/sdc
smartctl 7.3 2022-02-28 r5338 [x86_64-linux-5.15.40-Unraid] (local build)
Copyright (C) 2002-22, Bruce Allen, Christian Franke, www.smartmontools.org

Device is in STANDBY mode, exit(2)
root@Tower:~# 

 

These are the values I would expect. Are you able to post diagnostics? 

[ruihere]

@SimonF here it is

 

thanks!

 

tower-diagnostics-20220521-0738.zip

[SimonF]

1 hour ago, ruihere said:

@SimonF here it is

 

thanks!

 

tower-diagnostics-20220521-0738.zip 122.98 kB · 0 downloads

Looks like they are being spun down by something is spinning them up are both sdc and sdb unassigned drives?

 

I cannot see any drive assignments in the config file. 

 

May 21 03:40:16 Tower crond[1035]: exit status 1 from user root /usr/local/sbin/mover &> /dev/null
May 21 06:00:24 Tower emhttpd: read SMART /dev/sdb
May 21 06:00:24 Tower emhttpd: read SMART /dev/sdc
May 21 07:04:49 Tower emhttpd: read SMART /dev/sdd
May 21 07:05:01 Tower emhttpd: spinning down /dev/sdb
May 21 07:05:01 Tower emhttpd: spinning down /dev/sdc
May 21 07:34:50 Tower emhttpd: spinning down /dev/sdd
May 21 07:38:13 Tower emhttpd: read SMART /dev/sdd
May 21 07:38:24 Tower emhttpd: read SMART /dev/sdc

[ruihere]

@SimonFboth sdc and sdb are unassigned drives, they are external USB3.1 G1 harddrive enclosure.

is there a way to find out which app/process spin them up? 

[SimonF]

13 minutes ago, ruihere said:

@SimonFboth sdc and sdb are unassigned drives, they are external USB3.1 G1 harddrive enclosure.

is there a way to find out which app/process spin them up? 

try installing the file activity plugin.

[ruihere]

I did and monitor for about one hour, all the file actitivies are on my SSD drive. nothing on my usb hard drives. 

Edited May 21, 2022 by ruihere

[SimonF]

8 hours ago, ruihere said:

I did and monitor for about one hour, all the file actitivies are on my SSD drive. nothing on my usb hard drives. 

Anything accessing via UD external to the system, are they shared externally.

 

Any dockers accessing them?

 

Only other thing I can suggest is to run in safe mode to see if one of the plugins is spinning up the disk.

[kypu]

On 5/20/2022 at 11:00 PM, SimonF said:

Unraid thinks drive is active so will call smartctl based on poll timer.

 

what output do you get for hdparm -C /dev/sdx for usb drive and smartctl -n standby /dev/sdx

Hi Simon,

Geting just SMART error output and IDLE Mode is in state A.
So like you say Unraid dosnt recognize it is in standby even when i put him manually to sleep.
After all like in my post above the APC just works fine (spinning down after 10 minutes idle) but awakes after every 15 minutes without any access etc. (Unassignes drive not even mounted and i have no plugins installed to monitor this).
The global SMART pull timer on general disk settings is set to 86400s (seconds).

Do you need diagnostic file to check this behavior?
In the syslog are not really relevant events, only from my manually spin down but no task or pulls to wake up.
Might be something sysinternal???

Edited May 23, 2022 by kypu