Question Is HDD Spin Down an impossible task with a NAS ?

[miogpsrocks]

Is HDD Spin down an impossible task?

I have a NAS and I tell Windows to Spin Down the hard drives but they never do.

Windows will spin down the hard drives when not in use, so will my media player but my NAS will never spin down the hard drives.

I asked the manufacturer why they don't spin down and they said that every time a random packet is sent to it, it has to respond and also log the event.

If that is true, then how does Windows have hard drive spin down as well as other devices? If you look at wireshark, Windows is always sending out packets even without human involvement.

I don't know why the NAS never spin down but other devices are able to still spin down ?

Any ideas?

Thanks .

 

[Ralston18]

What is the driving requirement to have the NAS HDD(s) "spin down"?

What make and model NAS do you have, how many drives, how configured?

 

[USAFRet]

What NAS do you have?

For my QNAP, there are many possible reasons for not going to standby...
https://www.qnap.com/en/how-to/faq/article/why-cant-my-nas-drives-enter-standby-mode

 

[Misgar]

I have a NAS

You don't mention the manufacturer and model number of your NAS.

Does your NAS contain more than one hard disk?

Are the drives set up in RAID?

I asked the manufacturer why they don't spin down and they said that every time a random packet is sent to it, it has to respond and also log the event.

There are numerous posts about whether or not it's a good idea to spin down hard drives, or leave them running 24/7/365. It's a very old question.

https://www.reddit.com/r/homelab/comments/r9bqcj/is_it_safe_to_run_normal_hdds_247/

https://www.pcworld.com/article/457...a-hard-drive-running-when-its-not-in-use.html

https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/dep0g0/is_there_an_optimal_setting_for_turn_off_hard/

I don't know why the NAS never spin down but other devices are able to still spin down ?

If you built your own NAS and picked the operating system carefully, you might stand a better chance of controlling spin down.

When you buy a pre-built NAS, you're handing over such decisions to the manufacturer.

Are you trying to save power or do you believe that powering off disks extends their life expectancy?

 

[miogpsrocks]

What is the driving requirement to have the NAS HDD(s) "spin down"?

What make and model NAS do you have, how many drives, how configured?

Why do I need spin down? I have a backup NAS which is almost never used yet I have 12-bay hard drive running 24/7.
Linux based system. Synology.

DS2413+

CPU	INTEL Atom D2700

CPU clock rate

2.13 GHz

CPU cores

2

Total physical memory

2048 MB

I leave my windows PC on 24/7 regardless of even if I'm home or not. The hard drive will spindown when not used for 1 hour as I have setup. However this Synology device does not appear to ever spindown the drives because of random network traffic that is there from other devices on the network. Apparently it has to run all hard drives to see and respond to network traffic for some reason. Even if that network traffic is not even requesting to read/write on any hard drive. This does not follow what I see on other devices with HDD spin down or even other NAS I have used in the past. Just having SMB active is enough to keep it from spinning down the hard drives.

Also, I'm not sure if this is part of the problem or not but they don't even call it "HDD spin down" but rather " hibernation". So nothing can spin down unless the system is in hibernation and it won't go into hibernation unless there is no network traffic. Windows as anyone can tell who has ever look at network traffic can tell you is there is ALWAYS stuff happening regardless of what you are doing. It's never just quiet. The end result is that the HDD never spindown even when the machine is not used since its backup for files.