How to tell if drives are spinning down?

[tmchow]

I'm new to Unraid and just got a server up and running within the last month.  I'm learning a lot but have a long way to go.

 

I have noticed a lot threads worrying about disks in the array spinning down.

 

1. Is the obsession about disk spindown about preserving HD life? (i.e. less spinning means longer life?)

2. How can you tell if the disks are spinning down? I see spinup commands sprinkled throughout, such as:

 

Apr  5 00:29:12 Tower apcupsd[6600]: NIS server startup succeeded
Apr  5 00:29:12 Tower emhttp: Spinning up all drives...
Apr  5 00:29:12 Tower emhttp: shcmd (6): /usr/sbin/hdparm -S0 /dev/sdb &> /dev/null
Apr  5 00:29:12 Tower kernel: mdcmd (9): spinup 0
Apr  5 00:29:12 Tower kernel: mdcmd (10): spinup 1
Apr  5 00:29:12 Tower kernel: mdcmd (11): spinup 2
Apr  5 00:29:12 Tower kernel: mdcmd (12): spinup 3
Apr  5 00:29:12 Tower kernel: mdcmd (13): spinup 4
Apr  5 00:29:12 Tower kernel: mdcmd (14): spinup 5

 

However, in the syslog and I don't seen any spindown commands in there.  Does that mean disks are never spinning down?

 

3. Do I need to do something specific to enable spindown?

[gundamguy]

There are visual cues on main and dashboard. A spun down disk has a gray circle icon.

 

You can check your settings on settings -> disk settings -> default spin down delay.

 

Does this save life? Good question. It saves power...

[tmchow]

There are visual cues on main and dashboard. A spun down disk has a gray circle icon.

 

You can check your settings on settings -> disk settings -> default spin down delay.

 

Does this save life? Good question. It saves power...

 

Oh interesting.. in my Disk SEttings, I noticed that the default setting (i never changed it) was set to "Never".

 

 

 

Previous threads I'm reading on this subject seem to indicate there used to be a setting of  "default". This is no longer an option in 6.1.9, and is only "Never" or positive time increments (15 mins, 30 mins, 45 mins, 1 hour, then 1 hour increments to 9 hours).

 

Given mine is set to "Never", I think it's safe to assume no disk in the array will ever spin down

 

Any idea why this was changed to "Never" as default?  What are the current recommendations for using spinup groups?  All the info I see is linked to old docs for v4.x so not sure if the guidance has changed.

[itimpi]

Previous threads I'm reading on this subject seem to indicate there used to be a setting of  "default". This is no longer an option in 6.1.9, and is only "Never" or positive time increments (15 mins, 30 mins, 45 mins, 1 hour, then 1 hour increments to 9 hours).

 

Given mine is set to "Never", I think it's safe to assume no disk in the array will ever spin down

Not necessarily - those are the global settings (for which there never was a 'default' entry)

 

Any idea why this was changed to "Never" as default?  What are the current recommendations for using spinup groups?  All the info I see is linked to old docs for v4.x so not sure if the guidance has changed.

the default option appears when setting the spin-down for an individual drive where you want to override the global setting.  In this context default means use the global setting.  I for instance set my WD Red 6TB drives to never spin down (with the global setting set as 3 hours) as I found that if they spin down they seem to be liable to drop offline at some point.    Note that spinning down disks is primarily about saving power - NOT about extending their lifetime.    In fact there is evidence that frequent spin up/ spin down is more likely to effect lifetime adversely.

 

Any reference to spinup groups will still be relevant.  I have never used them so cannot give any guidance on this.