So, hard drives don't spin down now?

[sfatula]

"No one ever complained that it worked, or even said "it works for me"."

Ok, it works for me. I only spin down an external USB that I use for 1 of my backups. And it spins down, using the GUI to specify the parms. No special script.

 

[Davvo]

I fully agree with you. I also do not understand some opinions are sold as facts.

Which opinions are you referring to?

hdparm -y does standby the toshibas.

From what I have seen hdparm is slowly becoming unsupported nowadays.

So what I think is going on here is that ix system makes sure to only install hdd in their systems that do get standby'd. and the rest are considered edge cases that are just not worth it to support.

Likely a code or firmware issue.

too many people struggle with this for too long. all the way back since 2014 i found articles about the same thing with always non satisfying solutions sometimes no solutions

Most of the users whom are not able to spindown from the WebUI use this script. That (the Community) is the solution to many things in TrueNAS.

 

[diversity]

"No one ever complained that it worked, or even said "it works for me"."

Ok, it works for me. I only spin down an external USB that I use for 1 of my backups. And it spins down, using the GUI to specify the parms. No special script.

and I am sure there are many others.

but dont forget the rest of us with constant iossues on this front

 

[WI_Hedgehog]

Me to, and I use to perform head alignments of MFM and RLL drives. Those were very easy because they were stepper motors and you basically made a fine adjustment of the stepper motor until the heads and tracks were putting out peak signal. Also back in those days you could low level format a drive if your data was going to be deleted. One that was more challenging was a complete rebuild of a modified for submarine use IBM 2316 (ruggedized). See photos for what the disk pack looked like (14" wide, 11 platters and the bottom one was not used, it was support for the sector disk which is the aluminum disk at the bottom and it has slots cut all the way around it, and two slots close together to mark the start of the disk rotationally.) The heads were moved hydraulicly, it was hard sector, 100 cylinders, 20 heads (these were large at almost 1" wide and they did float on air, most of the time ), and so many people had a difficult time tearing one apart and putting it back together for refurbishment every ~90 days. We had two and one would be reworked before every patrol. I was the lucky dog because I actually understood how it worked (all the flip flops and the state they were in (lots of damn flip flops), and O'scopes for me were easy tools and I was mechanically inclined, so easy work. It took a 12 hours day to completed the maintenance, if you didn't cut any corners. The hard part was really one thing, the alignment of the heads to the center of the spindle, it had to be exactly parallel in motion while the heads moved in/out of the pack. A very slight offset meant some of the tracks would not produce adequate signal because the were not perpendicular to the disk tracks. We had the smallest hydraulic pump on the submarine. That was a question everyone was asked for submarine qualifications. I miss those days. Sorry about the sea story.


Is that a new feature? Are you talking about the Pin 3 issue? That isn't new, it's been around for a long time actually, at least 5 years if not longer. If you are good with a piece of tape, you can cover the pin and disrupt that 3.3 volt power delivery. It's not pretty but it does work as a good temporary fix. I don't recall anyone other than Western Digital doing this, but I could be wrong, it has been a while and I'm an old man as my title states.


We all complain and have bad days so it's not a problem, unless it's happening a lot and it offends people. I was not offended.

I remember those days, thank you for the story. Hydraulically positioned heads...

Ruggedized hard drives....not running into too many bumps on a sub, unless things are going really, really sideways, and then yeah, tense times.

 

[sfatula]

and I am sure there are many others.

but dont forget the rest of us with constant iossues on this front

The challenge is actually getting to zero IO. For my backup drive, that's easy as nothing else uses it. For normal Scale operations, very hard to get to zero IO I suspect?

 

[diversity]

The challenge is actually getting to zero IO. For my backup drive, that's easy as nothing else uses it. For normal Scale operations, very hard to get to zero IO I suspect?

i'd see you point yet it is only the toshibas that do not spin down in that mirror. so it is related to how the drives are spun down that simply does not work on all drives. hence I want to take a look at the code and suggest a more permanent fix that does not require exoitic scripts.

 

[sfatula]

i'd see you point yet it is only the toshibas that do not spin down in that mirror. so it is related to how the drives are spun down that simply does not work on all drives. hence I want to take a look at the code and suggest a more permanent fix that does not require exoitic scripts.

I understand completely. You had posted no one had said it works, so that was my only intent. For my pools, no chance they could ever spin down as they are always doing something. Sure, why not just report an issue to IX on their bug tracker?

 

[joeschmuck]

I have been spinning down 100% of my spinning hard drives (80+) for the last 12+ years and NONE have failed due to motor or electronic malfunction.
The 4, 5 of the "failed" ones, are still somewhat alive but have bad sectors, which are normal for aging drives.

I am quite curious about the data if you have any to share, I enjoy learning something new to be perfectly honest with you. Not slinging mud or anything, I'm sincere, and a bit skeptical as well but learning some factual data that someone has experienced is good. My questions would be: 1) What Make/Model of drives are you typically running? 2) Can you post some SMART data for a few of those drives that have some long hours on them? 3) What is the environment like where these drives are used? I suspect this is a corporation set of servers, not a home system, but you never know unless you ask.

What I'm looking at is the physical characteristics of the drive models you are using and the number of times the drives have spun up over a period of time (preferably around 43,000 hours minimum) to provide a frequency per day. If you have noticed some models that exhibit traditionally better longevity that other models, that would be good knowledge to share.

"for the last 12+ years and NONE have failed due to motor or electronic malfunction." What did they fail of?

I too took a little offense to the comment that we do not have logic, my nickname was 'Spock', wait maybe that was due to my pointy ears? But you may have just had a bad day, I choose to look at things that way until proven otherwise.

-Cheers