Disk Spin Down Delay.....whats a good starting point?.,.


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In the absence of facts we all tend to revert back to what "feels right" for us.

 

My array box is chocked full of fans and my drives run just a couple degrees over ambient when spun down.  (My drives idle around 14C and max out around 24C during the winter, and about 5-7C higher in summer).  Drives over 30C are a rarety any time during the year.  The difference betwen spun up and down is about 10C.

 

If I set all my drives to spin down after 15 minutes then on a typical weekend day, 2 of my drives would spin up and down 10 times each.  The rest wouldn't matter as much, but likely at least one other drive would be up and down 3-4 times.

 

Also, a car that spends a lot of time in the garage benefits from getting out on the road from time to time and burning some carbon off the pistons.  I tend to think of my drives like that too.  I've had perfectly good drives sit for long periods (1-2 years) and then refuse to work when trying to get them running again, leading me to believe that run time is a good thing for long-term health.  If you're only letting your drives spin for 15 minutes, that seems too short a period of time.  Although some of my drives don't spin up more than once or twice a week (some more like once or twice a month), when they do spin up I like to let them run for a few hours.

 

I used to use 1 hour spindowns but found that most of the time my drives were spun down.  There is a psychological component of thinking you don't want to spin up the drive just for this one little access. There is also the significant pause that occurs when you do access the drive.  At 5 hours, it is very rare that one of my often-used drives is not spun up as I am wokring (or playing).  There is also little "guilt" because I know I will be accessing it many times over the next few hours.

 

None of this is terribly scientific, but it makes sense to me so.  Saving a few hours a week in spin up time is likely not going to save enough electricity to power a light bulb for 15 minutes. 

 

What WOULD likely save some electricity is hooking my fans to a thermostat so they spin slower at low temps, and then increase at high temps.  I need to do some research on such a device that can handle 7 fans.  30-40 watts 24x7 would be significant over the course of a month.  Any ideas?

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In the absence of facts we all tend to revert back to what "feels right" for us.

 

Agree 100%. Its not unreasoble to request that unRAID logs spin spin down since it is the daemon doing so. My gut tells me that with this real data some serious pattern will come to light for each user. In fact since we now have per disk spin down settings I would go as far to say that it is an essential feature. This thumb in the air-gut-feeling-stuff really should be dropped in favour of some empirical evidence.

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What WOULD likely save some electricity is hooking my fans to a thermostat so they spin slower at low temps, and then increase at high temps.  I need to do some research on such a device that can handle 7 fans.  30-40 watts 24x7 would be significant over the course of a month.  Any ideas?

 

I believe what would help is PWM fans rather or some type of smart digital voltage, or attaching it to a lower voltage on the power supply.

Anything with heatsinks and control transistors may actually just be replacing the fan electricity with heat.

 

Now being able to turn them off strategically will save money.

This is why I went for 2 lower speed 120MM exhaust fans instead of 9 40 mm intake fans. (or something like that) on my rig.

 

In any case, this looks interesting.

http://www.frozencpu.com/products/7241/fan-432/Arctic_Cooling_Arctic_Fan_12_PWM_120mm_x_385mm_Fan_ACF12PWM.html?tl=g36c15s69&id=tGD26Dfq

 

 

 

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  • 2 months later...

If it is cool drives you want, consider what I am using, and it is not expensive:

I also have a 200mm fan on the surface/top of the case. I do not bother to turn on the top 5.25inch fan, as it is not needed.

It comes with 3 x 120mm (front), 2 x 120mm (rear) and 1 x 200mm (top), I had added a forth 120mm fan, but turned it off.

All fans come with a variable speed dial. Setting them all to their lowest is perfect.

 

http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=3630.0

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  • 8 years later...

i have 8 seagate archive 8TB disks, 2 of them are parity drives.

for parity drives the Spin down delayuse default
for data drives the Spin down delay: 15 minutes
 
i use my server rarely.. once or twice a week for 2 hours.
Should i put all disks (inducing parity drives) Spin down delay15 minutes or use default?
 
what is the default?
thanks
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  • 4 weeks later...
Could anyone suggest me what settings should i choose?
 
parity drives Spin down delayuse default
data drives the Spin down delay15 minutes
 
Should i use the 15 minutes spin down for all drives?
drives.png.e9062afa8828465db7cbd7f000c9dc22.png
There's no right or wrong answer. It's whatever works for your server really.

Sent from my SM-G920F using Tapatalk

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Agree -- there's no "right" answer to this.    I see no reason, however, to use a longer spin-down delay on parity.   I'd just use the same value for all of your drives.

 

FWIW I use 45 minutes for mine ... on the basis that if I'm using the server it's VERY unlikely I'd go more than 45 minutes between accesses, so it won't spin down while I'm still active.

 

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U can set the default spin down time, but if im right its 15min with 6.4


I have set it to 15, but most i do anyway on the cache drives, so it really just needs to spin up for mover or if i play a movie (and then it wont spin down anyway)


Just btw, i dont think its good if you post to 8 year old threads... bc this information here is very outdated.. it also depends on your energy bill, i have high energy cost here, so i try to save as many watt as possible.

Edited by nuhll
  • Like 1
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