How to work out if a board supports Staggered Spin-Up?

[Automatic]

Only reference I've found to this model supporting staggered spin up is in the manual:-

http://www.supermicro.com/manuals/motherboard/C202_C204/MNL-1270.pdf

 

However, that manual (As per the first page) is for multiple models of motherboard. Do they all support staggered spin-up or just some? Manual was found here:-

http://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/xeon/c202_c204/x9scm-f.cfm

 

Under "Motherboard Manual".

 

EDIT:- Also, if I use a PCI to SATA controller can "Staggered Spin Up" still work through it?

[WeeboTech]

You do not need to worry so much about staggered spin up at the controller or board level.

 

You can use hdparm and set the drive to power up in standby.

 

I used to have a script that set this on every drive when unRAID came up.

It worked great.

In fact some of the older WD drives had a jumper to enable this in the hardware.

 

When the machine was powered on all drives were in standby mode.

As the controller or the kernel needed to access the drive, it would spin up.

 

This did lead to a longer start up time.

Since I hardly ever turned my machine off, this was a small price to pay.

I tried it on many models with success, but there are warnings for using it on older drives.

 

http://reboot.pro/topic/16267-hdd-power-up-in-standby-puis-feature-to-block-non-system-disks-spinup-at-pc-wakeup/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spin-up

http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=6089.0

 

 

 

[Joe L.]

You do not need to worry so much about staggered spin up at the controller or board level.

 

You can use hdparm and set the drive to power up in standby.

 

I used to have a script that set this on every drive when unRAID came up.

It worked great.

In fact some of the older WD drives had a jumper to enable this in the hardware.

 

When the machine was powered on all drives were in standby mode.

As the controller or the kernel needed to access the drive, it would spin up.

 

This did lead to a longer start up time.

Since I hardly ever turned my machine off, this was a small price to pay.

I tried it on many models with success, but there are warnings for using it on older drives.

 

http://reboot.pro/topic/16267-hdd-power-up-in-standby-puis-feature-to-block-non-system-disks-spinup-at-pc-wakeup/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spin-up

http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=6089.0

This will NOT help if you have an under-powered power supply, since in the event of a read error, or a parity  check, all the disks are spun up by unRAID at the same time to reconstruct the data.

[Automatic]

You do not need to worry so much about staggered spin up at the controller or board level.

 

You can use hdparm and set the drive to power up in standby.

 

I used to have a script that set this on every drive when unRAID came up.

It worked great.

In fact some of the older WD drives had a jumper to enable this in the hardware.

 

When the machine was powered on all drives were in standby mode.

As the controller or the kernel needed to access the drive, it would spin up.

 

This did lead to a longer start up time.

Since I hardly ever turned my machine off, this was a small price to pay.

I tried it on many models with success, but there are warnings for using it on older drives.

 

http://reboot.pro/topic/16267-hdd-power-up-in-standby-puis-feature-to-block-non-system-disks-spinup-at-pc-wakeup/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spin-up

http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=6089.0

This will NOT help if you have an under-powered power supply, since in the event of a read error, or a parity  check, all the disks are spun up by unRAID at the same time to reconstruct the data.

 

Well, I've already bought it. Fingers crossed that it can deal with it, assuming that each drive only uses 30Watt and I got a 750Watt PSU, hopefully I'll be upgrading my entire build before I add too many drives along with the CPU & MOBO & FANs to kill it.

[WeeboTech]

The problem is you could have automatic spontaneous reboots or crashes if emhttp or the unraid driver spins up all the drives at the same time.

 

 

I would suggest after your build you test the setup with the spin up / spin down. multiple times

 

 

 

 

What PSU did you get?

How many drives do you plan to support?

[Automatic]

The problem is you could have automatic spontaneous reboots or crashes if emhttp or the unraid driver spins up all the drives at the same time.

 

 

I would suggest after your build you test the setup with the spin up / spin down. multiple times

 

 

 

 

What PSU did you get?

How many drives do you plan to support?

 

At the moment, 8 directly off the bat. As per the future, no idea, just "as I need them". PSU would be this.

 

Also, (Completely off topic) if for whatever reason the server is forcibly shutdown during preclearing a disk, other than the preclearing up to this point's logs being lost, will anything happen? Because I'm going to need to preclear 5 drives the second I get it, and, I'll have no idea how "stable" it is (Then once those 5 drives are done, copy the data from my current 3 drives and then preclear those 3 drives).

[WeeboTech]

PC Power and Cooling Silencer Mk II 750W High Performance 80PLUS Silver SLI CrossFire ready Power Supply

Robust and dedicated single +12V rail @ 62.4A

 

 

You will be fine for many drives. 20-24.

If you are that concerned for preclearing 5 drives simultaneously, then only hook up those 5 drives until you are done.

However, that's a good PSU with a good strong single rail.

I had a corsair 750 split rail and I had 20 drives on it. 1/2 were 5400/5900, the other half were 7200.

I would still enable PUIS via hdparm as I think it's better for the drives.

I would still test the system with SPIN UP / SPIN DOWN buttons,. but I do not think you will have any problems.

 

 

[Automatic]

PC Power and Cooling Silencer Mk II 750W High Performance 80PLUS Silver SLI CrossFire ready Power Supply

Robust and dedicated single +12V rail @ 62.4A

 

 

You will be fine for many drives. 20-24.

 

Well, considering my case has a limit of 20 drive (Unless I want to start hanging drives out the side) with 5by3 drive cases, that should be good! Not that I have 20 drives.

 

If you are that concerned for preclearing 5 drives simultaneously, then only hook up those 5 drives until you are done.

 

I'm already forced to do that, since I'd prefer to transfer to data over to it via my network (7TB worth, gonna be fun, eh?) rather than plugging a drive in and have the chance of accidentally wiping it (Which is a lot like me).

 

So, my plan is:-

A. Preclear all 5 drives

B. Copy all 7TB over

C. Insert the 3 drives that are currently holding the 7TB worth of data

D. Preclear those 3 drives

E. Have a (Hopefully, assuming no drives fail the preclear) 15TB server

 

However, that's a good PSU with a good strong single rail.

I had a corsair 750 split rail and I had 20 drives on it. 1/2 were 5400/5900, the other half were 7200.

I would still enable PUIS via hdparm as I think it's better for the drives.

I would still test the system with SPIN UP / SPIN DOWN buttons,. but I do not think you will have any problems.

 

 

 

I'll be enabling PUIS for sure, simply because if the drive isn't needed to be read/written from/to, why spin it up? Booting up isn't a valid reason since no operating system is stored on any of the drives.

[WeeboTech]

If you are doing this from windows, use tera copy, it will copy to the machine, then read it back to make sure the CRC's match.

Other choice is to make md5sum's in the directories and validate them on the remote side.