Well, S6 is 30 seconds. Is that still too low?

 

It might be, but check with the command I provided to validate.

Some drives also spin up when queried with smart or some other program.  Depends on firmware. Recent drives do not have this problem, but the older drives may exhibit this behavior.

So I've now set it also to s18 which is 1min 30sec. And I check it with the -C flag, and it continues to show as active/idle

capital -S#

 

Also when you initially set the value with -S240 or something, the drive will spin up, then wait for the counter to timeout.

I would suggest setting it higher.

Here is what now happens. I clicked the drive in the unRAID UI and set the spindown to 15 minutes. It spun down after that amount of time. I checked with hdparm -C and it reported as standby. After loading the unraid UI, the unassigned devices plugin takes about 15 seconds to report back information, after which the drive is spun up. How can I prevent the unassigned devices plugin from spinning up my drives?

Here is what now happens. I clicked the drive in the unRAID UI and set the spindown to 15 minutes. It spun down after that amount of time. I checked with hdparm -C and it reported as standby. After loading the unraid UI, the unassigned devices plugin takes about 15 seconds to report back information, after which the drive is spun up. How can I prevent the unassigned devices plugin from spinning up my drives?

 

I think that's for another thread. The unassigned devices plugin must not be using the smartctl -n standby as in

 

root@unRAIDm:/usr/local/emhttp# find . -name '*.php' | xargs grep smartctl

./plugins/dynamix/include/DeviceList.php:  if (!file_exists($smart) || (time()-filemtime($smart)>=$var['poll_attributes'])) exec("smartctl -n standby -A /dev/$device > $smart");

I've posted over in that thread as well. The more odd thing is, that the OTHER drive that unassigned devices is managing (for mythtv recording and KVM mythbuntu ISO) stays spun down after it's inactive time. It seems simply loading the unRAID GUI makes it only spin up the drive with no FS on it yet. 

I've posted over in that thread as well. The more odd thing is, that the OTHER drive that unassigned devices is managing (for mythtv recording and KVM mythbuntu ISO) stays spun down after it's inactive time. It seems simply loading the unRAID GUI makes it only spin up the drive with no FS on it yet.

 

 

I'm guessing... perhaps the disk partition table not cached, so the drive is examined thus causing it to spin up. Just a guess.

Interesting.  I wonder if you booted a spare UnRAID USB flash drive (perhaps an old v5 Basic key so it's both free and doesn't expire) and assigned ONLY the spare drive you want to keep ... and let it format the drive;  then shut down and reverted to your normal flash drive if the spindown would then work, since the spare drive would now have a file system on it.

 

I am experiencing the same problem, has there been any solution found to this issue? 

 

I have multiple unassigned devices that I pass through to a VM and even when the VM is shut down the unassigned devices keep spinning. Whether I have the Unassigned Device Plugin installed or not makes no difference, also as @mikedpitt420 mentioned, refreshing to tabbing on different pages in the Unraid Gui makes all unassigned devices spin up. I can live with spinning up unassigned devices upon Unraid bootup but even running hdparm -S 200 /dev/sbc does not spin down my device at all after specified period. Something in Unraid holds a firm grip on power management of unassigned devices. I run Unraid 6.3.5 and no other plugins (aside Unassigned Devices Plugin but even without it did not work). 

 

Any pointers what I could check next?