Question about RSYNC and Drive Standby

[Gareth Hill]

Good evening all,

I have a smallish Freenas box (HP N54L 5 HDD's) I'm using to replace my WHS. It only serves myself and my family so the access is not 24/7 or probably even 8 hours a day!

I have set my drives to go into Standby after 60 minutes with spindown to reduce power and heat but I also have RSYNC tasks that occur which sync my Movies/TV Shows and Files direct to another HP Microserver which acts as my backup and more importantly HTPC.

My question is does the RSYNC tasks prevent the drives going to Standby, even if there is nothing needed to sync between them?

Also is it recommended to Standby the drives? I've seen mixed comments on each way really.

 

[cyberjock]

rsync will spin up the drives as it has to figure out if anything has to be synced. Once it's figured it out(which could take anywhere from a few minutes to a few days depending on the quantity of data you have) the rsync process will terminate and the drives will then behave as expected for the workload at that time.

 

[Gareth Hill]

Thanks very much Cyberjock.

Another question then, on my WHS I had an Add-in that used to allow me to suspend the server and wake it up when other PC's were turned on. Is there an Plug in or setting that can replicate this? I did do a little search but couldn't find anything on the subject.

Thanks!

 

[cyberjock]

Nothing like that exists for FreeNAS. FreeNAS is designed fro 24x7 uptime.

 

[Gareth Hill]

Thanks Again Cyberjock!

 

[TheSmoker]

Gareth. If you REALLY want you can put your FreeNAS to sleep and wake it up via magic packet (WOL). It is not recommended as the most stressful actions for a computer/server is shutting down and waking up and that is the time during which most of the components could potentially malfunction.

 

[Gareth Hill]

Thanks TheSmoker, this was more of a nice to have than a have to have. I don't mind leaving it on it's fairly low power and I can have it do the online backup during the wee hours.