Not been this frustrated for years

[tommytomato]

Yes, that is weird, as was the volume issue with 8.0 which happened stright off from installation and despite a clean drive. Could I please ask, is a lot of hard disk starting and stopping activity normal? I am concerned for the platters because it sounds as though the arm on both drives is parking as soon as it completes any activity. There is no problem when the NAS is idle, just when it does anything.

And thank you again for sticking by me through all this. I really like the idea of FreeNAS and it does seem to be intuitive in the main, but it also reminds me of Windows fifteen years ago with occasionally strange behaviour. Tonight has freaked me out a little in terms of trusting FreeNAS with our data given that I am far less conversant with Linux based OSes.

 

[ProtoSD]

No, I don't think it should be doing that. Was it doing that earlier? or possibly since you enabled SMART? So you're hearing something like a solid click after you copy something? or more of a chatter? or does the drive spin down and you're hearing it spin back up?

If it wasn't doing it earlier, my guess is it's a SMART setting, but I'm not really sure. It doesn't sound normal.

I feel pretty confident in my data being safe with FreeNAS, but there are a few glitches you have to try and work around or just deal with with the GUI. They seem to be pretty responsive to problems and suggestions, and it just takes a little time to iron things out sometimes.

 

[tommytomato]

It was happening pre-SMART, since the second disk was added. It sounds like the arm parking, and the disks are definately spinning up and down each time something is done.

I am actually less concerned for the safety of the data (given the OS is separate) than for any loss due to weird glitches with the OS. I do very much like it though so will muddle on subject to this disk management issue.

 

[Milhouse]

Could I please ask, is a lot of hard disk starting and stopping activity normal?

For each of your disks, what have you specified for Advanced Power Management? You may want to read this thread regarding the aggressive power management of the latest Samsung drives - chances are you've enabled this aggressive behaviour with your APM configuration, so leave APM disabled.

 

[tommytomato]

Thank you so much Milhouse, the behaviour described in the thread is exactly what I have been experiencing, with the spinning up nd down and associated delays whilst it gets up to speed. I had APM on Level 1 and HDD Standby at 20 mins in FreeNAS. I have now disabled APM and set HDD Standby to 10 mins in FreeNAS, would that seem about right, or am I still too aggressive with the standby time? It is at that setting because most of the time the Microserver is just used for backups. Very little streaming ever occurs.

Also, presumably there is no need to do anything to the Samsung APM on the disks themselves?

 

[Milhouse]

I have now disabled APM and set HDD Standby to 10 mins in FreeNAS, would that seem about right, or am I still too aggressive with the standby time?

That depends on how you intend to access your server. If you only stream movies, a 30 minute time might be suitable. For file serving, a longer timeout of an hour or two might be beneficial. As a backup server, which may be accessed only once a day, then a 10 minute or 5 minute (or even shorter timeout) might be entirely suitable.

Just set the standby time so that it is a good balance between availability and power saving (also reduced noise which may be more important than saving power for some users), based on how often you think you will be accessing the server.

Also, presumably there is no need to do anything to the Samsung APM on the disks themselves?

As long as APM is disabled in the FreeNAS GUI you should be OK, but ensuring it is also disabled on the disks themselves (using the Samsung disk utility) wouldn't be a bad idea just in case you decided to use them in another OS and got bitten by the aggressive power management profile again.

 

[tommytomato]

Thanks again Milhouse. The backup is ongoing, a utility pushes from the clients every ten minutes if there have been any changes in data files. Traffic can vary a fair amount. In the day, it might be a constant trickle, then nothing at night when clients are switched off. I am torn between ten minutes and perhaps extending to twenty in order to ensure the disks don't power down just as the backup utility is about to send further data updates.