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From: Johnny B Good on 25 Aug 2008 06:32 The message <VA.000014b6.25413890(a)nospam.aaisp.org> from Daniel James <wastebasket(a)nospam.aaisp.org> contains these words: ====snip==== > Most of the NAS boxes have settings to spin the drives down, that's not > the question. I was wondering what happens when a PC pokes the NAS box > for some data and then has to wait around for the drives to spin up > before getting an answer ... how long does it take the OS to get bored > and time out? Either 30 or 60 seconds. Probably the latter (at least for ms windows). Since spin up can take a (seemingly) interminable 5 to 7 seconds, that's not going to be the problem. The big problem is going to be the frustration and annoyance factor, especially if multiple 'double clicks' results in several instances of whatever it was you were trying to do (even if the extras just generate a message to tell you that the application is already running and a new instance cannot be started). Imho, if you need to 'save electricity', a setting in the 30 minutes to 2 hours idle time before spin down 'ballpark' would represent a reasonable trade off between wear and tear on both your 'nerves' and the drive's well being. You certainly don't want the timeout set much lower than 30 minutes, if the 5 minute one on the Medion 500GB external USB2/E-sata drive is any indicator. -- Regards, John. Please remove the "ohggcyht" before replying. The address has been munged to reject Spam-bots.
From: Gordon Henderson on 25 Aug 2008 14:00 In article <313030303737303648B2985D91(a)plugzetnet.co.uk>, Johnny B Good <jcs.computersbutt(a)plugzetnet.co.uk> wrote: >The message <VA.000014b6.25413890(a)nospam.aaisp.org> >from Daniel James <wastebasket(a)nospam.aaisp.org> contains these words: > >====snip==== > >> Most of the NAS boxes have settings to spin the drives down, that's not >> the question. I was wondering what happens when a PC pokes the NAS box >> for some data and then has to wait around for the drives to spin up >> before getting an answer ... how long does it take the OS to get bored >> and time out? > > Either 30 or 60 seconds. Probably the latter (at least for ms windows). >Since spin up can take a (seemingly) interminable 5 to 7 seconds, that's >not going to be the problem. The big problem is going to be the >frustration and annoyance factor, especially if multiple 'double clicks' >results in several instances of whatever it was you were trying to do >(even if the extras just generate a message to tell you that the >application is already running and a new instance cannot be started). Heh... As an experiment, I once built a 6-disk RAID-5 array and arranged it to auto spin down when idle... (used noflushd) It actually worked a treat - however ... Accessing it when it was all spun down was interesting - as sometimes it would need to spin-up 5 or 6 drives, one after the other before it would start to serve data. Never seen anything "fail" when using it though. (And I used it for a few months during testing it) Gordon
From: Daniel James on 26 Aug 2008 07:26 In article news:<313030303737303648B2985D91(a)plugzetnet.co.uk>, Johnny B Good wrote: > Either 30 or 60 seconds. Probably the latter (at least for ms windows). > Since spin up can take a (seemingly) interminable 5 to 7 seconds, > that's not going to be the problem. That sounds about right ... you may have noticed elsethread that I found a good deal on the Netgear (Infrant) ReadyNAS Duo and went for that, so I've now got first-hand experience. I've got drive spin-down configured for an hour and it hardly ever annoys me by being slow. Interesting: It appears to spin the drives up one at a time (good thing there are only two) -- presumably to avoid the power drain of two drives spinning up at once. I am occasionally surprised by the drives spinning up when I wouldn't expect them to ... but it seems to be just Windows Explorer (I've not yet had the box in use with only linux clients connected) poking the network to make sure it's display is still valid. Thanks for the info. Cheers, Daniel.
From: Nigel Wade on 26 Aug 2008 10:32 Daniel James wrote: > In article news:<313030303737303648B2985D91(a)plugzetnet.co.uk>, Johnny B > Good wrote: >> Either 30 or 60 seconds. Probably the latter (at least for ms windows). >> Since spin up can take a (seemingly) interminable 5 to 7 seconds, >> that's not going to be the problem. > > That sounds about right ... you may have noticed elsethread that I found > a good deal on the Netgear (Infrant) ReadyNAS Duo and went for that, so > I've now got first-hand experience. > > I've got drive spin-down configured for an hour and it hardly ever annoys > me by being slow. > > Interesting: It appears to spin the drives up one at a time (good thing > there are only two) -- presumably to avoid the power drain of two drives > spinning up at once. Be grateful. The NAS I bought, a Thecus N2100, would spin up both drives at the same time. Unfortunately its 12V/5A PSU wasn't sufficient to spin up both drives at the same time (despite the drives being on the officially supported list) when the system was attempting to boot... The ensuing spin-up drives, PSU overload, spin-up drives, PSU overload cycle didn't do either the PSU or the drives any good. -- Nigel Wade
From: Johnny B Good on 26 Aug 2008 10:33
The message <VA.000014cb.5759f550(a)nospam.aaisp.org> from Daniel James <wastebasket(a)nospam.aaisp.org> contains these words: > In article news:<VA.000014c1.397e7422(a)nospam.aaisp.org>, Daniel James > wrote: > > As it sits here chuntering away to itself the Seagate disk is at 50C > > (according to its own SMART data) and the Samsung is at 38C ... I don't > > know whether that's an accurate reflection of the temperatures of the > > drives or whether it reflects greater optimism on the part of Samsung's > > Smart code, but it is possible that it's an indication that the Samsung > > is a cooler-running drive as the two are side-by-side in identical > > bays. > As an experiment I swapped the drives around ... the bays themselves are > identical but the Samsung had previously been in the bay against the > outside of the case while Seagate's was next to the logic board ... but > the Samsung *still* claims to runs cooler than the Seagate by the same > margin. The Seagate did feel warmer when I swapped the drives. The > Seagate is quieter, though: You can distinctly hear head movement from > the Samsung. Those temperatures suggest you could do with improving the cooling arrangement (especially in the case of that Seagate unit). Of course, we'd need to know the ambient temperature before coming to any firm conclusion (but I suspect you would've mentioned a room temperature of some 30 odd deg C if it was warmer than the more typical 22 deg :-) It aughtn't be too dificult to hold the drive temperatures to within 10 to 15 deg above ambient if you put your mind to the problem. The 50 deg reading rather suggests it's a rebadged Maxtor rather than a pukka Seagate unit. Unless the room is at a nice 'n' toasty 25 deg, even the Samsung looks a little on the warm side, suggesting a lack of airflow over the drives. It doesn't require much airlfow to keep the drive temps within 12 deg of ambient. The drive temps for the 2 WD 320GB SATA drives in my win2k box are just 32 deg (10 deg above ambient). The three drives in my FreeNAS box are showing 29, 30 and 33 deg. In both cases, case ventillation is provided solely by the quietly running PSU fans (although I've fitted a 7 volted slimline 60mm fan in the workstation to divert some of the incoming air over the drives). It's the drive temperatures which set the upper ambient temperature limits of operation. In my case, both the server and my desktop PC are rated for a 40 deg C maximum safe ambient temperature. This means I'll be the one to quit from heat prostration, rather than the hardware. :-) HTH -- Regards, John. Please remove the "ohggcyht" before replying. The address has been munged to reject Spam-bots. |