Which HDDs DO spin down properly?

Discussion about hard drive spin down (standby) feature of NAS.
pingu
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Which HDDs DO spin down properly?

Post by pingu »

So, having been informed by QNAP support that there is a problem with Western Digital disks (WD5000AAKS in my case) in that they do not always spin down properly, I want to know which disks work properly and with which firmware.

Does anyone have the Seagate ST3500630AS disks? That is what I was thinking of replacing the WDs with.

Can someone from QNAP comment?

Also, if your disks are working, can you confirm that they continue to work and spin down after a write operation.

Thanks,
pingu.
tads
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Joined: Sat Sep 15, 2007 4:15 am

Post by tads »

No problems here:

TS 109 with FW 1.1.1 (latest)

HDD model : WDC WD5000ABYS-01TNA12.0
HDD capacity : 500 GB
glider307
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Post by glider307 »

I am using 2 Seagate ST3400620NS (Barracuda ES 400GB). Same problem - no spin down :x

Roman
pingu
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Post by pingu »

glider307 wrote:I am using 2 Seagate ST3400620NS (Barracuda ES 400GB). Same problem - no spin down :x

Roman
:( Is that even disconnected from your network?
glider307
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Post by glider307 »

Yes and no. The NAS is connected to the router, but the router is stand-alone, i.e. cable modem is off and PC is in hibernate mode (see also this post http://forum.qnap.com:/phpbb2/viewtopic.php?t=224).

I will try by actually disconnecting the network cable, too, and let you know.
Strangely, I think I remember the HDD spinning down in the very beginning, i.e. before I activated FTP and multimedia station. Could not verify this up to now, though.

Roman
pingu
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Post by pingu »

Do you have TwonkyMedia running? Have you set the rescan time to zero?

I was occasionally able to get mine to spin down, but then any write to the disks prevented going to sleep thereafter until a hard power cycle.
glider307
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Post by glider307 »

Twonky is not yet running - I intended to do this some time in the future. Currently I use a Linksys NSLU as media server - doesn't spin down either but is at least much, much cheaper!

Only services running are FTP and multimedia station :?:

Roman
Point7
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Location: Belgium

Post by Point7 »

After the latest firmware upgrade i have NO problems with standby.

I use the 1 hour setting.

See sig for details.
QNAP TS-109 1.1.4 Build 1207T
500GB Seagate ST3500830AS 3.AA
pingu
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Posts: 33
Joined: Tue Sep 04, 2007 4:35 pm

Post by pingu »

tads wrote:No problems here:

TS 109 with FW 1.1.1 (latest)

HDD model : WDC WD5000ABYS-01TNA12.0
HDD capacity : 500 GB
Point7 wrote:After the latest firmware upgrade i have NO problems with standby.

I use the 1 hour setting.

See sig for details.
Thanks.
marct
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Joined: Thu Sep 06, 2007 9:25 pm

Post by marct »

Hi,

I have been investigating a lack of spin down on my QNAP TS-209 and found that the Maxtor Diamond Max 10 Model 6V300F0 300Gb drive caused spin down to NOT occur when it is plugged in.

My other disk Seagate ST3500630AS 3.AA spins down correctly, so far! :)

I hope this helps.
Marc
NAS: TS-209
Firmware: Version 1.1.1 build 0831T
Raid: Off
HDD: 1 x 500Gb Seagate (ST3500630AS 3.AA) & 1 x 300Gb Maxtor (6V300F0)
SlimServer Installed
USB Drive: 1 x 500Gb NTFS
OS: Windows Vista
marct
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Posts: 26
Joined: Thu Sep 06, 2007 9:25 pm

Post by marct »

MMmm, that previous post was a little incorrect. It seems that the spin down was a coincidence. The drive doesn't seem to spin down any more. :(
NAS: TS-209
Firmware: Version 1.1.1 build 0831T
Raid: Off
HDD: 1 x 500Gb Seagate (ST3500630AS 3.AA) & 1 x 300Gb Maxtor (6V300F0)
SlimServer Installed
USB Drive: 1 x 500Gb NTFS
OS: Windows Vista
User avatar
aquila
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Joined: Thu Sep 13, 2007 4:27 pm
Location: Australia

Post by aquila »

Hi
I found that if I enabled UPS support ( in System Tools ) my HDD would not spin down ; worth a quick check. Sorry if this a known issue already.
Otherwise its spinning down as configured, no probs.


_________________________________________________________

NAS: TS-109
Firmware: Version 1.1.1 build 0831T
Raid: Off
HDD: 1 x 500GB Samsung HD501LJ
OS: Windows XP
Router: Billion 7402VGP
Media players: Roku M500 & Roku M1001
Running Twonky pre-installed; rescan time=0.
FTP enabled
Public + Qmultimedia folders as mapped drives with MS networking
pingu
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Post by pingu »

marct wrote:MMmm, that previous post was a little incorrect. It seems that the spin down was a coincidence. The drive doesn't seem to spin down any more. :(
:( Well I should be getting my ST3500630AS drives today. I will be extrememly annoyed if the problem persists having been told by support that I shouldn't have bought the WD disks that are on the compatibility list (why are they on there then?).

However if you are having problems with your Seagate - I'm wondering whether it is a disk issue at all. I'll update the forum with my findings....
pingu
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Joined: Tue Sep 04, 2007 4:35 pm

Post by pingu »

OK, so got my Seagates last night.

Went through the whole initialisation thing and let the disks Resync (took ages). Then, lo and behold, into standby she went :D
Then I restored all my settings from when I had the WD disks (so twonky on, mediastation on, download station on, windows file sharing on, ftp on), I also wrote a test file to the Public share. Bing! Into standby after approx 5 mins and it was still in standby this morning *dances-a-jig*.

Got some more testing to do tonight, especially doing some streaming, large file transfers etc., but so far, so good.

QNAP - if you read this, I strongly urge you to at least put a note on your compatibility list against the WD disks. The standby feature is important to a lot of potential purchasers.

The Seagates are slightly noisier than the WDs (they sound like a bag of broken glass when seeking) but not nearly as bad as I had been led to believe and of course they are silent when in standby!
pingu
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Posts: 33
Joined: Tue Sep 04, 2007 4:35 pm

Post by pingu »

All was going pretty well except that my 209 was active this morning!

Now I think it's because of the thumbnail generator that is kicked off via the cron job at 3 in the morning, which was still running at 7.

I did load about 1700 photos last night (about 1.2 Gb worth). How long would you say the ImR_all process should take with this?

Also, does this mean that the QNAP will come out of standby every night at 3 even if there are no new thumbnails to generate?
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