[Proxmox 9 / Debian 13] Drives won't spin down when mounted RW, but work perfectly RO. At my wit's end.
Posted by raycekar@reddit | linuxadmin | View on Reddit | 15 comments
High level, looking for some help with mdadm / RAID 1 spinning down hard drives and I can't seem to figure out what is keeping my drives spun up.
I have all the info in my previous post: https://www.reddit.com/r/homelab/comments/1oh41et/proxmox_9_debian_13_drives_wont_spin_down_when/
BloodyIron@reddit
Spinning drives down and back up drastically increases wear on HDDs. YOU DO NOT WANT THIS, especially for redundant storage. The motors in HDDs are literally Engineered to be continually spinning.
raycekar@reddit (OP)
Agreed, this has is not going to be used often at all but I want something to back up files along with not constantly running up the meter
BloodyIron@reddit
I just want to add that I'm not trying to attack you. I hope I don't come across as that, and I am sorry if that is how I came across.
I am trying to give you reliable information, as I honestly think dealing with the spinning down of drives is going to give you more problems than solutions. I've worked with storage systems for decades now, and I have only ever found more problems than solutions with spin-down stuff.
I can appreciate that where you appear to be coming from is to min/max your power savings, and in a lot of areas I can get behind that. But when it comes to Hard Disk Drives, as in not solid-state, but with rotating platters, spin-down really is never worth it. There are other more worthwhile areas to min/max power savings, like with CPU settings for example, or even fan changes can yield rather worthwhile results (not always, but often).
So if there's any other areas you might have questions, I'd love to do my best to answer them. Not even just spin-down stuff, but other IT systems stuff you might have questions about. I've pretty much worked with everything.
raycekar@reddit (OP)
Your good, and sounds you have much more expirence than I do when it comes to this, but because of my situation, I want to for max power savings over anything else since these drive can potentially sit for months without being touched, and so I don't care too much on the wear of things. Main set up is to have 3 copies of everything. Honestly with further testing, I am thinking it might be mdadm and I'm now probably going to go the route of staggered backup system with rsync or variant
BloodyIron@reddit
I'm a big fan of ZFS and ZFS' send/recv. It's a great ecosystem and what I would recommend for first consideration.
BloodyIron@reddit
The power difference is not going to be something you will notice. You will end up spending more on replacement drives than the power difference cost you think it amounts to. You're wasting your time chasing pennies you won't actually ever see.
raycekar@reddit (OP)
Your probably right I'm chasing pennies. This is most definitely a me issue where I see something running that doesn't get used often, I have the urges to shut it down
BloodyIron@reddit
Yup! But think logically each time. It doesn't make sense in all cases. :)
1esproc@reddit
One spinning drive idling for a full year would cost me $4.66. This is a drop in the bucket of what running your server or NAS would cost.
1esproc@reddit
One spinning drive idling for a full year would cost me $6.50. This is a drop in the bucket of what running your server or NAS would cost.
sdns575@reddit
Hi,
as suggested disable spin down of HDD, it will destroy your HDD and for me is not useful on server
About the process that write and that does not permit the spindown is probably mdadm that when mounted in RW try to update every things on other disk like file metadata, or parity on raid5/6.
In the past I had the same problem (not on proxmox) and disabled spindown for 2 2.5 hdd (from old notebook) using hdparm at boot
motorhead84@reddit
what does lsof show?
raycekar@reddit (OP)
lsof didn't show any open files with the raid
Amidatelion@reddit
Two things that immediately spring to mind to test:
My gut reaction is that this is somehow a Proxmox behaviour but hell if I know what it could be.
raycekar@reddit (OP)
I'll give the jounaling a try. I am thinking your right that it might be a proxmox thing. I'll be doing some more testing later in the week. Sad thing i s I'm leaning towards breaking my raid to the individual drives as well to see if it is raid or maybe just drive behaivor