Samsung HD103UJ, No Spindown!

[lagamm]

I just bought a new 1TB (7200rpm) Samsung HD103UJ for my parity drive. Before I had in a WD Green WD10EACS 1TB (5400rpm). I decided to use the Samsung for the parity drive due to better performance.

With the WD drive all the drives would spin down after the 1 hour set time. I switched out the WD for the Samsung and re-built parity.

 

After and hour I looked at the drives and all of them were spun down except the Samsung. I pressed the sindown button and then it spun down. Rebooted and after an hour same thing happed. After several other reboots and power downs I cannot get this drive to automatically spin down as the system did before with the WD drive.

 

I did search and came across a couple of posts about others with the same problem but there was not difinitive answers. One person I believe sold his Samsung drive (not doing that)! Wish I read those posts before! would have bought different brand!

 

Help!

 

 

[Billped]

Perhaps not a response you are looking for, but the incremental heat/energy/noise generated from a single spinning drive is fairly minimal.  Multiply that by 16 and it is something to be very concerned with, but for just one drive I would not worry about it.

 

 

Bill

[NAS]

One other user has reported this. As a reponse it was suggested that the new version of unRAID would fix it by reverting to an older way of spinning down drives. A new version of unRAID was released a few hours ago, we are just waiting for confirmation that this change has been made

[yodine]

I have 11 of these samsung drive. Truly they don't spindown after 1 hour.

 

BUT Truly also they end up sleeping. Give him a night and in the morning it will have spindown on its own. Each time a check after a night without activity (like copyong new files), the 11 drives are spindown and the computer just eats 79W.

[lagamm]

I am running 4.4b right now and was running 4.3.

 

I understand that 1 drive  is not a big deal but being an engineer, when things dont work perfectly (which they ussually never do) it really bugs me.

I just want it to work like it's supossed to!

that said I'll probly keep it for a while in hope the new revisions eventully solve this issue for me. If not I most likly will move the Samsung drive into my HTPC for DVR which currently holds the WD 1TB that woked before.

[NAS]

Sounds like the changes werent reverted as expected. We need to wait for Tom to revert to the previous method of spin down which will solve your problem.

 

TBH i expected it to happen in this version since the code is already done.

[yodine]

I understand that 1 drive  is not a big deal but being an engineer, when things dont work perfectly (which they ussually never do) it really bugs me.

I just want it to work like it's supossed to!

 

It is not that it doesn't work, they spin down, it just takes more than 1 hour for the samsung drive. I didn't time it to see exactly how long, all i know is that they spindwon everytime.

Did you give it some time to spindown, like the night without activity for example ?

[RobJ]

Sounds like the changes weren't reverted as expected.

 

Just a comment, related to the excerpt below from the new release of v4.4beta1:  when you release a new version with substantial changes, you have to make sure the foundation or core of it is still perfectly stable.  This first release incorporates a significant update in the kernel, plus SMP support, both of which require thorough compatibility testing.  I doubt that most users will see anything different with this release, but it is important that as many users test it as possible, to ensure that the foundation is solid, before Tom can add the new features and changes.

 

Time for a new set of features!  As with past release cycles, we will be releasing a set of 'beta' releases, each with new functionality and/or bug fixes.  The 4.4 series will probably be our longest with a substantial set of changes by the time we're done.

[NAS]

Sounds like the changes weren't reverted as expected.

 

Just a comment, related to the excerpt below from the new release of v4.4beta1:  when you release a new version with substantial changes, you have to make sure the foundation or core of it is still perfectly stable.  This first release incorporates a significant update in the kernel, plus SMP support, both of which require thorough compatibility testing.  I doubt that most users will see anything different with this release, but it is important that as many users test it as possible, to ensure that the foundation is solid, before Tom can add the new features and changes.

 

Time for a new set of features!  As with past release cycles, we will be releasing a set of 'beta' releases, each with new functionality and/or bug fixes.  The 4.4 series will probably be our longest with a substantial set of changes by the time we're done.

 

Sounds fair however using that argument bugs should be fixed before new features are added especially since this bug was caused by a new feature itself.

 

yodine "It is not that it doesn't work," is exactly what is happening. The settings you apply are not working. Yes they will spin down but completely outwith your control so thats a bug.

 

I wouldn't worry to much about it, its just a matter of time until the code is reverted.

[WeeboTech]

For those who want to play.

 

http://www.samwel.tk/smart_spindown/download/smart_spindown

 

Sounds fair however using that argument bugs should be fixed before new features are added especially since this bug was caused by a new feature itself.

 

I kinda agree with this logic a lil.  The spin down issue has been the source of discussion for quite some time now.

 

[WeeboTech]

Also, I'm just curious has anyone used the hdparm command directly to set the drives spindown timer manually?

I would believe this should be done after emhttp has been fired off.

Still, it might be worth a test.

I'm wondering if there is an issue inside the drive's firmware rather then a problem with unRAID.

My thought is that the table inside the drive's firmware may not correspond (or may outright ignore) specific bits when setting the spin down timer.

 

      -S     Set the standby (spindown) timeout for the drive.  This value is used by the drive to determine how long
              to  wait (with no disk activity) before turning off the spindle motor to save power.  Under such circum­
              stances, the drive may take as long as 30 seconds to respond to a subsequent disk  access,  though  most
              drives are much quicker.  The encoding of the timeout value is somewhat peculiar.  A value of zero means
              "off".  Values from 1 to 240 specify multiples of 5 seconds, for timeouts from 5 seconds to 20  minutes.
              Values  from  241  to  251 specify from 1 to 11 units of 30 minutes, for timeouts from 30 minutes to 5.5
              hours.  A value of 252 signifies a timeout of 21 minutes, 253 sets a vendor-defined timeout, and 255  is
              interpreted as 21 minutes plus 15 seconds.
[/quote]

[Joe L.]

Also, I'm just curious has anyone used the hdparm command directly to set the drives spindown timer manually?

I would believe this should be done after emhttp has been fired off.

Still, it might be worth a test.

I'm wondering if there is an issue inside the drive's firmware rather then a problem with unRAID.

My thought is that the table inside the drive's firmware may not correspond (or may outright ignore) specific bits when setting the spin down timer.

 

      -S     Set the standby (spindown) timeout for the drive.  This value is used by the drive to determine how long
              to  wait (with no disk activity) before turning off the spindle motor to save power.  Under such circum­
              stances, the drive may take as long as 30 seconds to respond to a subsequent disk  access,  though  most
              drives are much quicker.  The encoding of the timeout value is somewhat peculiar.  A value of zero means
              "off".  Values from 1 to 240 specify multiples of 5 seconds, for timeouts from 5 seconds to 20  minutes.
              Values  from  241  to  251 specify from 1 to 11 units of 30 minutes, for timeouts from 30 minutes to 5.5
              hours.  A value of 252 signifies a timeout of 21 minutes, 253 sets a vendor-defined timeout, and 255  is
              interpreted as 21 minutes plus 15 seconds.
[/quote]

 

Try this:

grep hdparm /var/log/syslog

 

You will see that emhttp issues hdparm commands to set the spin-down time.  It is highly likely the disk firmware is the underlying fault.

[lagamm]

Just for the record! I am not blaming Unraid software at all for this issue since it did work for me fine with other HDD.

 

I agree about the Samgung firmware.

 

One other thing, it's a real newbie question so please dont bash to bad.

I see lot of posts about posting scrips or creating a new Kernal. (not even sure i'm using the terminology correctly,lol!)

Is there any good info anywere so I can learn basically what you guys are doing and where to do it at. Yes I know I probly should leave it to the experts but looking through this forum it looks like there is allot of cool things you can customize Unraid to do for you. Except when I read how to do it, it's like i'm back in my old Latin class 20years ago, LOL! Not a clue!

thanks again,

Larry G

[WeeboTech]

Is there any good info anywere so I can learn basically what you guys are doing and where to do it at. Yes I know I probly should leave it to the experts but looking through this forum it looks like there is allot of cool things you can customize Unraid to do for you.

thanks again,

 

Start here at the Wiki, Look at some of the FAQ's, Best of Forum and HowTo's. (actually check it all out!)

http://lime-technology.com/wiki/index.php?title=Unofficial_Documentation

 

Except when I read how to do it, it's like i'm back in my old Latin class 20years ago, LOL! Not a clue!

We've all started like that at one point or another.

I originally worked on mainframes, then came the the whole downsizing movement and they put me on 3 different platforms in one year. (talk about head spinning!  )

Just keep searching around, reading, asking questions and trying.. It becomes natural eventually.

[olympia]

I was the guy with the more weeks samsung struggling, which ended up selling the drive.

 

Well, I have to say sorry and ask for an excuse from samsung.

That was true, that after replacing the samsung with a WD10EACS, there was no spin down issue in my test bed any more.

But than when I set up my final unRAID storage with 2 WD10EACS (one for parity) and several other drives, my spin down issues started to appear again. Even in case of WD10EACS. And yes, it is true that they always spin down after a few hours (minimum 4), but it is not how it suppose to work. The only drive, which always spun down with the built in method in my setup is a SATA Samsung 500GB and a Maxtor 200GB drive.

HD103UJ, WD10EACS, Samsung 750GB, WD 400GB RE2 all has spin down issues in my setup. They spin down randomly. Every bootup, an other drive going to sleep in time, the others ara just hours later. But there were several cases, when all of my drives spun down in time, after a reboot. I was not able to find any logic in it. So I am pretty sure that it is something with the built in health check in the drives (some smart selftest) which are only built into the newer drives. Or maybe something with unRAID.

 

But it is definitely not Samsung. Sorry for this again. (I payed a lot of money for this lesson).

 

Nevertheless, at the end, all my spin down issues has been solved by unraid notify script (featured with an OS controlled spin down timer), thanks to brainbone!

[lagamm]

I do not know how long it took but the SAmsung eventually spun down.

Just not after an hour. it was somewhere between 4-12hours