Spin down of Seagatediscs in Raid1 Array (3 discs)

[TechGameGeek]

I have activated a spin down of my 3 Seagate harddiscs, which are in a Raid1-BTRFS array. It looks like that the discs do not spin down, even if rockstor runs (without activity) for 12 hours+

Detailed step by step instructions to reproduce the problem

Go to the GUI and then set a spindowntime for your harddiscs

If I spin down the discs manually (also via GUI) they spin down.

Question: Should the discs spindown after that time even if they are in an array, or is it not recommended to spin down discs in an array and this is the cause of not spinning down after the amount of hours of inactivitiy?

Thanks a lot!

[simon-77 (Simon)]

Well, some Seagate HDDs are somewhat uncompatible regarding disk spin-down.
Which model do you have exactly?

I also had some isses with the spin-down of my Seagate drive which I have discussed in detail here:

Disk spin-down not working on Seagate IronWolf Pro

Hey, I had an issue on my Rockstor system regarding a HDD not spinning down and I would like to share my findings and workaround. I have 2 drives in my new Rockstor system: Seagate IronWolf Pro Toshiba N300 NAS Both are 18TB in capacity, SATA-III and are fairly new models (bought in 2023). For the Toshiba N300 NAS drive I was able to configure the spin-down settings via Rockstor Web-UI and everything worked as expected. But the Seagate IronWolf Pro drive was not configurable via Rockstor W…

@TechGameGeek

Question: Should the discs spindown after that time even if they are in an array

Yup, they array should not have any influence on the spin-down of discs.

[TechGameGeek]

Hi,
I now disabled smartdchecks (i think) by editing /etc/smartd.conf and commenting out the

DEVICESCAN entry, looking like

#DEVICESCAN

at the moment. It seems like the disks spin down now after a period of 2 hours. I am aware that it is no good idea to disable SMART, but it seems like that did the trick.

So the question is now, is there any possibility to let the discs “SMART-Check” only once a week?

Disks are 3x ST10000NM0046

Thanks!

[Flox]

Glad you could find a workaround for now… I’m not that familiar with smartd conf, and what I’m about to write has not been tested by myself.

@TechGameGeek

So the question is now, is there any possibility to let the discs “SMART-Check” only once a week?

Your question had me curious so I looked at the manpage for smartd.conf:
https://manpages.opensuse.org/Tumbleweed/smartmontools/smartd.conf.5.en.html

I recommend reading this as it is full of information (smartmontools is very extensive), a few of which could be of interest to your question directly. In particular, see the help for the -s option: https://manpages.opensuse.org/Tumbleweed/smartmontools/smartd.conf.5.en.html#s

The -n option also seems interesting: smartd.conf(5) — smartmontools
Its description seems very interesting in your context:

[ATA only] This ‘nocheck’ Directive is used to prevent a disk from being spun-up when it is periodically polled by smartd.

Hope this helps,

[TechGameGeek]

Hi @Flox thanks a lot… uh what a large amount of documentation concerning SMARTD. I will have a look into it, as soon as I have enough time.

Especially I will try

@Flox

[ATA only] This ‘nocheck’ Directive is used to prevent a disk from being spun-up when it is periodically polled by smartd.

[Tex1954 (Old Hardware Guy)]

As stated before, Seagate does their own S.M.A.R.T. thing and you can find a ton of info Google search like Error reporting? and spin-down and such. I suspect some tweaking is needed somewhere in Linux to distinguish Seagate drives methods from the rest of the world and handle them differently.

In any case, I NEVER spin-down drives, NOT EVER! My setups run years 24/7/365 and have only lost 2 HDD drives in 19 years. However, I’ve clobbered SSDs in a couple months time testing them as cache setups… LOL!

Stable constant temp is better than constant high current startup and cool-downs IMHO for any setup.

Of course, a Quality UPS in needed (and a MUST IMHO) also.

Your choice, but as a bottom line, why not let’m spin and worry about other things?

[TechGameGeek]

@Tex1954

Your choice, but as a bottom line, why not let’m spin and worry about other things?

Hi and thanks for your opinion. In an corporate environment I fully agree with you. But my Rockstor is runnings Rock-Ons on SSD, and I habe a Backupstoragepool on 3x Seageate HDDs (Raid1). I am not often reading or writing data to it. Perhaps once a week.

If they run all day there is some noise (which is really loud @those seagates) and they are running for hm… nothing.

The start/stop will shorten their live, as you said. I assume you access your discs daily?

[Tex1954 (Old Hardware Guy)]

Yes, my NAS is my mass storage device for my main workstation. I do use them daily. I also understand your needs as well which makes sense in your use environment. Still, the IronWolf series isn’t bad so far as life goes. Your drives are better yet!

One of the resources I use to help decide how various vintages of drives are behaving is the Backblaze reports. Backblaze is a huge online enterprise level backup service that uses mostly commercial drives. You can google Backblaze Drive Reports or just go here for more info.

I still think there is something to be done in Linux itself somewhere to support Seagate specific SMART and command interface… there is definite glitches in the way they respond compared to WD or HGST or Toshiba.

Good luck and have fun! If you get it all working properly, please share!