Yes, but I'm not 100% sure I need them.

 

I have a large Movie share which goes across 2-3 disks. When browsing movies, I hate to have to wait for another drive to spin up when testing out different movies so I put them all on the same spin-up group. If unRAID would do that automatically for shares based on "included" disks, that would remove the need for me to do this.

In relation to the top post on this thread. I would like to see this replaced with something as follows if what follows isn't already implemented. When I spin up up my array, I would like for the disks too spin up individually or in groups of 2 or 3 as I don't want to risk the 12V rail sagging in voltage. Just a thought.

Not at the moment, but I see them as potentially useful. Why take them out? How much overhead does it add to the system?  I guess if they were removed, if the function could be available as an addin if needed?

 

I've never used them. However, was considering it now, but seeing as they might go away, may consider not using them.

I had a use case before, when I used 6x 8TB drives. This was on my Media share, where I had used "most-free" and changed the directories split such that each 30 minute GoPro video would be placed among these drives evenly. I would do this so that when reading videos from these drives whilst doing video editing that would reference 4 or 5 videos from the trip of the day, I could get full sequential reads from the Array disks per video. In order to prevent spin-downs, my work around would be to set the disk spin down delay to that of 45 minutes, that way, it was harder for the drive to spin down, while reading from all the drives.

8 hours ago, RifleJock said:

I had a use case before, when I used 6x 8TB drives. This was on my Media share, where I had used "most-free" and changed the directories split such that each 30 minute GoPro video would be placed among these drives evenly. I would do this so that when reading videos from these drives whilst doing video editing that would reference 4 or 5 videos from the trip of the day, I could get full sequential reads from the Array disks per video. In order to prevent spin-downs, my work around would be to set the disk spin down delay to that of 45 minutes, that way, it was harder for the drive to spin down, while reading from all the drives.

If all of the videos from one day were in the same folder, you'd be better off setting the split level of the share to make sure they all stayed together.  That way you're only spinning up one disk.  More economical.

On 7/2/2021 at 4:23 AM, Cessquill said:

If all of the videos from one day were in the same folder, you'd be better off setting the split level of the share to make sure they all stayed together.  That way you're only spinning up one disk.  More economical.

While that is a valid point and what I currently do with my anime directories (for plex and other media servers). The goal with the GoPro libraries was not for that of economics, but rather, of performance from the array disks.

With the anime libraries, it's setup to where a disk is accessed based on the series you are watching. If you decided to binge the series, the disk will stay spun up as the shows usually don't exceed 45 minutes (post full read and cache of the at each start of an episode) of which, is my disk spin down setting time.

For instance Plex will read a disk at the start of an episode. Go full ape in transcode based on your transcode settings. Transcoded files then sit on the cache to be read back live during your stream. If the disk spun down, and the user either decided to change their quality settings, skip the episode at some point, or scrub backwards (sometimes, transcodes are discarded and need to be rerecorded (this was back in the day.. transcodes stick around a little longer now.).).

Anyways, it just so happens that 45 minutes until spin-down works perfectly in all the scenarios that I could reference in my system. That combined with specific directory splitting, or disk allocation methods, I've not had to use the spin-up groups as of yet.. though I'm starting to see more of a need for them...

If anything spins down my drives, I consider that a failure.

 

To each their own.

On 12/10/2021 at 11:30 PM, MrGrey said:

If anything spins down my drives, I consider that a failure.

 

To each their own.

WoW! I want my drives spun down whenever they aren't in use. I have several unRAIDs setup with 20+ drives. I use the Dynamix caching plugin so directories are in memory. And if a drive needs to spin up it's only a short delay. Much better than my systems using 200 watts or so each, constantly. With everything spun up.

 

Although I am in the process of moving everything off of my first three unRAIDs, with 20+ drives in each. To unRAID setups with only five drives in use. My unRAIDs with, a large number of drives, use 3TB and 4TB drives with two parity drives. And my new unRAIDs will only use five 14TB drives. With only one parity drive. Then I will setup several unRAIDs, only using the 4TB drives I have. With only five drives in each again. But only 16TB, total storage, for the arrays. That way I can further split up my content to separate systems. And only turn them on as needed.

 

Right now, it looks like I might end up with eight or nine unRAID setups. When I'm finished transferring all my content.

Edited May 14, 20233 yr by aaronwt

I don't use them and probably never will. But i liked the idea of relating this feature with the share.

no

On 5/15/2023 at 4:29 AM, aaronwt said:

WoW! I want my drives spun down whenever they aren't in use.

I thought I'd just add that I also want them spun-down when not in use, but mainly due to wanting to minimise the heat generated by a spinning drive.

 

I want my case fans running as silent (slow), as possible, as well as lowing the power drain of my unRAID to <6W when drive's are not actively in use.

 

I found this thread, after changing my spin-down delay to only 30 minutes of inactivity, and noticing Spin-up Groups were enabled, even though I wasn't using them (now disabled).   I recently upgraded my unRAID motherboard to something newer, than the old one I'd been using for years.  After doing this I noted the resulting spin-up buffering delays, on starting a viewing / listening, were now much shorter and entirely acceptable, than they had been on my older / slower unRAID server motherboard.

 

If the implementation of multiple array types. I could see the use and return of spin groups functionality between the multiple arrays.

ie:
Array 1
d1>parit

Array 2
d1>parity

array 1 and array 2 are rsynced / mirrored...

But No. I usually setup my machines to be 24/7 in balanced power modes. and not run constant read write systems on my disks. Unriads default spin up and spin down for the disk on idle without entering the spinup/down group settings has been fine for me over the years.