4 minutes ago, doron said:

I don't know that it does not, or why it wouldn't. Do you see a new issue after migrating to 7.3.3? If so, please report.

(the Reddit post you point to is quite ancient, and I have not bumped into it until now)

No issues. I was just trying to troubleshoot as to why my drives aren't spinning down until I bumped into that thread. I installed your plugin and it solved my issue.

Do you know why unraid's built-in script doesn't support SAS drives natively?

On 10/23/2026 at 5:09 PM, kevindd992002 said:

No issues. I was just trying to troubleshoot as to why my drives aren't spinning down until I bumped into that thread. I installed your plugin and it solved my issue.

Do you know why unraid's built-in script doesn't support SAS drives natively?

Because not all SAS drives respond well to spin down and can cause drop outs

On 10/23/2026 at 7:09 PM, kevindd992002 said:

Do you know why unraid's built-in script doesn't support SAS drives natively?

Basically, what Simon Said.

The entire "spin down" notion is not defined well enough in the SAS (a SCSI flavor) standards. SAS drives are made primarily for data center and enterprise use, focusing on 24x365 operation for storage (cold storage is managed differently). There are low level SAS commands that imply "stop the spindle rotation temporarily and park the heads", but they are sort of half-baked in terms of the wider ecosystem (e.g. it is not well defined how exactly the drive will resume rotation). Therefore, different drive makers, firmware versions and even HBA firmware versions implement it differently. Ranging from (a) completely ignoring it, via (b) acting on it but requiring an explicit resume command, through (c) acting on it and resuming implicitly upon the next read/write issued against the drive.

Due to how Unraid is designed, only drives that are implementing the latter "mode" perform as expected for Unraid spin up/down config.

This, in sharp contrast with how SATA drives implement this - those are marketed for home/SOHO installation in which usage is not 24x7 and energy economics take precedence.

Throughout the years of developing and maintaining this plugin, I've seen no improvement in the behavior of SAS drives in this context; on the contrary. Even some vendors who "got it right" in previous models, started shipping firmware with inconsistent spin up/down performance. It's just how the industry is.

I just recently purchased my first SAS drive and installed it. After a couple of months of wondering why it was never spun down (as the newest drive in the array, it had the most space, so maybe it was constantly getting used)... I decided to look into it.

Someone on the UnraidOfficial Discord server recommended that I install this plugin. I've gotta say, it WORKS!!! (for my drive, at least, I read the comment above about the hit-or-miss implementation of spin down).

However, on the first weekly run of Fix Common Problems after installing it, I get a warning telling me

The plugin sas-spindown.plg is not known to Community Applications and is possibly incompatible with your server

This is more than confusing, since I installed it through the CA Apps tab (v4.x is the last time I installed a plugin by hand - don't even remember how!) and the plugin is still listed in Apps...

Bizarrely, though, I cannot now find it in the Installed Apps section, even though it's listed as an installable plugin.

Any idea what's going on here or why FCP would give me a warning about this?

Sorry: Should have mentioned I'm on 7.3.4. I did install this on 7.3.3 and got the original warning there - I've just put off asking about it for a couple of weeks.

Edited October 29Oct 29 by Free Man

45 minutes ago, Free Man said:

The plugin sas-spindown.plg is not known to Community Applications and is possibly incompatible with your server

Interesting. I can't reproduce this issue here - I'm at 7.3.4 as well, and at FCP v2026.10.12.

Are you at the current version of FCP?

Perhaps @Squid would be able to shed some light on this?

I also can't reproduce this issue. I have both FCP and just installed SAS Spindown a few days ago through the Apps tab.

Edited October 29Oct 29 by kevindd992002

17 hours ago, doron said:

Are you at the current version of FCP?

Yes. I auto update everything, so I'm always current as of "yesterday". Current version: 2026.10.12

100% reproducible here - Just finished another FCP scan:

Just realized that I'm on SAS-Spindown v 2024.11.25 - rather old, is that the current version? There no indication of an update...

Looks like the latest 7.3.4 Unraid broke this plugin functionality for me. Spin-down was working fairly reliably, but I would get errors on my parity drives occassionally, which are resolved by a parity check. I used AI to help troubleshoot. No audible spindown occurred during these tests.

Hardware:

- Drives: HGST HUH721212AL5205 SAS, firmware NM08

- Disk tested: /dev/sdb, serial 8CH22L2H

- Unraid: 7.3.4

Regression:

- Same hardware previously physically spun down audibly and had multi-second first-read latency.

- After 7.3.4 reinstall, plugin sdspin returns rc=0 but does not physically spin down.

Evidence:

1. Baseline direct read: ~0.004–0.008 sec

2. /usr/local/sbin/sdspin /dev/sdb down => rc=0

3. Wait 60 sec

4. First direct read: ~0.007 sec

5. Diskstats show no reads/writes during wait, so nothing woke the disk.

6. sg_start --pc=3 behaves the same.

7. sg_start --stop returns rc=0 but first read gets immediate I/O error until sg_start --start, so not safe for online array use.

See attached diag file zipped.

Rather than downgrading Unraid, due to the critical PHP vulnerabilities, I'm going to just leave them in the spun-up state. I have a manual L-M-H speed fan switch on the large ATX cube case so at highest the 120 mm fans are not very loud and keep the drives a bit hot but under 118F but still better than lower speeds. I am going to start trawling eBay for SATA drives as I can probably sell these SAS drives for a good price. Just providing this information in case they can fix the likely kernel change the broke SAS Spindown plugin.

sas-spindown-diag.zip

Edited October 31Oct 31 by havoc7701

5 hours ago, havoc7701 said:

Looks like the latest 7.3.4 Unraid broke this plugin functionality for me. Spin-down was working fairly reliably, but I would get errors on my parity drives occassionally, which are resolved by a parity check. I used AI to help troubleshoot. No audible spindown occurred during these tests.

Hardware:

- Drives: HGST HUH721212AL5205 SAS, firmware NM08

- Disk tested: /dev/sdb, serial 8CH22L2H

- Unraid: 7.3.4

Regression:

- Same hardware previously physically spun down audibly and had multi-second first-read latency.

- After 7.3.4 reinstall, plugin sdspin returns rc=0 but does not physically spin down.

Evidence:

1. Baseline direct read: ~0.004–0.008 sec

2. /usr/local/sbin/sdspin /dev/sdb down => rc=0

3. Wait 60 sec

4. First direct read: ~0.007 sec

5. Diskstats show no reads/writes during wait, so nothing woke the disk.

6. sg_start --pc=3 behaves the same.

7. sg_start --stop returns rc=0 but first read gets immediate I/O error until sg_start --start, so not safe for online array use.

See attached diag file zipped.

Rather than downgrading Unraid, due to the critical PHP vulnerabilities, I'm going to just leave them in the spun-up state. I have a manual L-M-H speed fan switch on the large ATX cube case so at highest the 120 mm fans are not very loud and keep the drives a bit hot but under 118F but still better than lower speeds. I am going to start trawling eBay for SATA drives as I can probably sell these SAS drives for a good price. Just providing this information in case they can fix the likely kernel change the broke SAS Spindown plugin.

sas-spindown-diag.zip

Does that mean the GUI also doesn't show grey circle icons (standby)? Because mine still does, with 7.3.4.

Edited November 1Nov 1 by kevindd992002

16 hours ago, havoc7701 said:

I used AI to help troubleshoot.

While you're testing, can you, right after the sdspin /dev/sdb down command, issue sdparm /dev/sdb -C sense and post the results? This typically tells you whether the spin down actually affected the drive.

Hey, @Squid, sorry to bother you, but do you have any idea why I might be getting the FCP warning noted here: https://forums.unraid.net/topic/97351-plugin-spin-down-sas-drives/page/28/#findComment-1640664

I've gotten that the last 3 or 4 weeks since I installed it from CA...