APM, HDD Standby For Backup Pool

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fukie

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Feb 12, 2014
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Hi all,

I'm having a dilemma as I have a bunch of HDDs as my backup pool which I am planning to rsync like once a week or maybe fortnightly? However, because I have another 7 HDDs as my main pool, totalling 10-15 drives right now, heat is a concern as temperatures have been hovering around 38-46 degrees, especially on the older drives. I live on the equator on a tropical island, hence its a challenge to bring HDD temps below 40 degrees which is the recommended. My case is a Norco 4224 with the fans at full, I even switched to a Pentium G series processor to help reduce the overall system temperatures.

Less of upgrading my fans to noisier ones (its already crazy noisy enough...), I'm looking at APM and HDD standby for my backup pool only. I will still leave the main pool HDDs running 24x7 on, no standby and APM as well, its my primary pool which is accessed on a daily basis.

I did a search around the forums but most discussions were focused on their primary pool which most conclusion was, not to turn on APM and HDD standby due to jails, system logs, random accesses and etc.

However, my situation is that the HDDs are only used during rsyncs which may only happened once a week.

Any advice and what should the recommended settings be, while still keeping SMART tests (short, twice a month and long, once a month) and scrubs active (twice a month). And also, how often can my rsyncs occur (every day? every week? or every fortnight?) with the APM and HDD standby settings turned on. I'm looking at completely turning off / standby the HDDs for this backup pool to reduce heat and also some watts.

Thank you.
 

joeschmuck

Old Man
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I don't see any reason you cannot try APM on those drives. You may need to turn off your machine after changing the settings and then power it back on (not a reboot) for the settings to take affect, even though it should be an instant setting now. The drives should stay in the lower powered state until they are requested for data.

I question the short smart test only twice a month, it should be daily if possible as this will tell you your hard drives have failed or are failing, very important data to have. I run the long test weekly as well, once a month might also be doing you a dis-service.
 

diedrichg

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Didn't the FN system files get moved to the disks in recent releases? Therefore this causes frequent disk access and the inability for the drives to spin down? I've heard you can move these system files to a different drive to stop disk access and to allow them to spin down but you'll have to search the forums for those posts as I can't remember where I read this info. I may not even be correct in what I'm remembering.
 

joeschmuck

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That is true however I was expecting either the .system dataset was on the USB drive or main pool, not the secondary "backup" pool.
 

panz

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With your case (the Norco is like mine) couldn't you pull the disks of your backup pool? I have a conf like yours and I always pull the disks I'm not using (with removable trays this operation is very easy).
 

diedrichg

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That is true however I was expecting either the .system dataset was on the USB drive or main pool, not the secondary "backup" pool.
Oops, sorry. I totally missed the first line that said "backup pool".
 

fukie

Dabbler
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Feb 12, 2014
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Hi joeschmuck, noted, any settings that you would recommend to standby those drives in the backup pool?
Yea, I think I previously misread cyberjock's thread on his scrub and SMART tests. I have adjusted my SMART schedule to every 5 days for the short test and twice monthly for the long test.

Hi diedrichg, yes, I saw posts on system files preventing drives from going to standby while searching an answer to my problem. However, my question is somewhat unique as I would like to power down the backup pool instead of my primary pool. And the system files are saved to the primary pool only (I'm intending to move this to a standalone HDD, using an old HDD).

Hi panz,
Yes, I have the same case as you, the idea is to make it easier for me to standby the drives when not in use, and "activate" them when its time to rsync my drives. Pulling and putting in drives every week is not a feasible option for the long run and IMO, it brings unnecessary wear and tear on both the HDDs and the casing. Connectors would fail, components may get shorted and etc. I feel hot swapping is like a shock treatment to the drives. But regardless, technology helps make our lives easier, not make us get bound to them. And what if I'm out of town? Or I missed the schedule before plugging in the drives? And what if I can't monitor the continuous SMART tests that might let me know if any impending problems? I'm sorry but I think your suggestion raises more questions and processes that the problem it solves.
 

panz

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Pulling and putting in drives every week is not a feasible option for the long run and IMO, it brings unnecessary wear and tear on both the HDDs and the casing. Connectors would fail, components may get shorted and etc. I feel hot swapping is like a shock treatment to the drives. But regardless, technology helps make our lives easier, not make us get bound to them. And what if I'm out of town? Or I missed the schedule before plugging in the drives? And what if I can't monitor the continuous SMART tests that might let me know if any impending problems? I'm sorry but I think your suggestion raises more questions and processes that the problem it solves.

IMHO is not a good idea to put into the same machine the "main" pool and the backup pool: I did that because I don't want to build another server just for backup purpose.

You know, if you let your backup pool stay into your main server 100% of the time a lot of bad things could happen: your PSU could screw everything up, your motherboard decides to suddenly die, etc.

So, because "in medio stat virtus", I choose to put my drives (once a month) into my server, just for the time required to backup my main pool. Those removable trays are built to withstand 12 or 15 or maybe 100 insertion/pull cycles per year without breaking your precious connectors seated in the (very sturdy) backplanes.

Other solutions (like letting the backup drives stay into your case 24/7 and sleep them) expose your backup hardware to the same risks as your main drives...
 

fukie

Dabbler
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Feb 12, 2014
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Hi panz, thank you for your advice. I understand the risk but I have another system (much slower) which has my key backup. So this backup pool is just temporary until I upgrade into something faster and more reliable.

So does anyone have any recommendations to the settings I should be using?
Or shall I just go extreme and put HDD Standby at 330, APM at Level 1 and acoustics at minimum?

Thank you.
 
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