QNAP NAS Community Forum

Hi,

I am using a QNAP TS-659 PROII and it's fantasitc. I have five 3TB Seagate ST3000DM001-9YN1CC4B drives and they all click, spin down and spin up constantly every 20 seconds or so. Most of you would know that this is the head parking and the drive spinning down. This is called a 'load cycle' and the drives are only rated for about 300,000 of them. Some people are reporting a lot of load cycles so not only are they noising and annoying but they're also putting mechanical stress on the drives.

I have updated my QNAP to run a script when it boots and this has solved the spin down/up problem. No more clicking or chirping and it's been running for days now!!!

(see note below about drive names if you're running a different system)


Here's how you do it:

1 - download PuTTY from this link:

http://the.earth.li/~sgtatham/putty/lat ... /putty.exe

...this allows you to log in to your QNAP to type commands.

2 - run PuTTY

3 - when it asks for a Host Name (or IP address) enter the address of your QNAP. If you don't know
what it is press the button on the front of the NAS and note its number. Mine is set to:

192.168.0.100

...now press Open.

4 - When it says: "Login as:" type in your NAS login. You generally type in "admin" or your login name if it's different.

5 - Do the same for password. Type in "admin" if you have not changed your password.

6 - Type this in and press enter:
(you can cut and paste this text from this document and when in PuTTY right-click to paste it in. Better than typing!)

mount -t ext2 /dev/sdx6 /tmp/config

7 - Type this in and press enter:

vi /tmp/config/autorun.sh

This opens a text editor called "vi"

8 - Now press "a" to add text and enter the following lines and press enter after each line:

#!/bin/sh
hdparm -B 255 /dev/sda3
hdparm -B 255 /dev/sdb3
hdparm -B 255 /dev/sdc3
hdparm -B 255 /dev/sdd3
hdparm -B 255 /dev/sde3

9 - Now press ESC to exit edit mode

10 - Now press "ZZ". These are capital ZZ so hold down shift when you do it. The text editor is now
closed and has saved a file called autorun.sh for you.

11 - Type this in and press enter:

chmod +x /tmp/config/autorun.sh

12 - Type this in and press enter:

umount /tmp/config

13 - Now close the Windows Software PuTTY.

14 - Turn off your QNAP and turn it on again.

Your drives will no longer spin down and spin up making horrible clicking noises. You will not need
to do this again as autorun.sh is exectued each time you start your NAS.

Great success!!

NOTE: Your NAS may be different from my RAID5 NAS and you may need to change the "/sda" text to
something else. To see what your QNAP is using start PuTTY again and enter the following command:

mdadm --detail /dev/md0

This will display information about your drive. At the end you'll see something like this:

Number Major Minor RaidDevice State
0 8 3 0 active sync /dev/sda3
1 8 19 1 active sync /dev/sdb3
2 8 35 2 active sync /dev/sdc3
3 8 51 3 active sync /dev/sdd3
4 8 67 4 active sync /dev/sde3

Note the /sda3 /sdb3 etc. These are the names of your disk drive. You should change your autorun.sh
to whatever your system says when editing your text file.

I hope this helps!

Andrew McLean
http://www.aerosoft.com.au

Hi,

Has anyone else tried my fix for the Seagate drives parking/spinning up/down issues? I'd be interested in seeing if other user's drive issues have been solved. For me the QNAP and Seagate drives are now performing flawlessly.

Andrew

Hi

I have an identical setup to yours (except 3 x HDD not 5) and the chirping was starting to worry me & drive me mad!!!!

Followed your walkthrough and so far no nore chirping or clicking, seems to have sorted it right out.

Nice job - thanks a lot.

Thanks for this, my 2x Seagates are now much more well behaved.

Incidentally, if you have a TS-210 like myself, you ma need to change the mount command to:

# mount -t ext2 /dev/mtdblock5 /tmp/config

Could the OP or a moderator please change the topic of the thread to include the relevant information that this is specific to Seagate and possibly only a single(?) disk model?

P3R wrote:Could the OP or a moderator please change the topic of the thread to include the relevant information that this is specific to Seagate and possibly only a single(?) disk model?

Well, first users buy smart drives, and then disable all features ?!? Essentially, this works woth any HDD make and model...

Probably it would make much more sense, to update the ST3000DM001-9YN1CC4B to CC4H firmware - along with the v3.7.1 NAS firmware both updates are mandatory to operate the NAS.

schumaku wrote:Essentially, this works woth any HDD make and model...

Sure but the original subject was highly misleading as "chirping and clicking" isn't an issue with 3 TB disks in general, and the described procedure is normally not necessary for other disks.

Probably it would make much more sense, to update the ST3000DM001-9YN1CC4B to CC4H firmware - along with the v3.7.1 NAS firmware both updates are mandatory to operate the NAS.

I believe this sentence is now the most important information in this whole thead (therefore I took the liberty of making it bold).

Thank you for the quick change of the original subject line Mr Moderator!

Hello,
Would this patch work for TS-212 model as well?

What exactly does it do? isn't it causing any issues to the drive?

Also ST3000VX000 suffers chirping problem. And this solution is solving this. This is good to know that there is firmware update, but not for this branch of drives. Also how to update firmware if you have no PC?

@voodle50 : After this months of work, do you have any issues with disabled APM? I mean if spin-down/stand by working with this feature disabled?

msmolka wrote:Also ST3000VX000 suffers chirping problem. And this solution is solving this. This is good to know that there is firmware update, but not for this branch of drives. Also how to update firmware if you have no PC?

Ask the disk manufacturer.

Theoretically, it's possible to disable all the fancy features by hdparam ie. at boot time.

voodle50 wrote:mount -t ext2 /dev/sdx6 /tmp/config

Greetings!

question regarding the above command. typed this on my TS419p-ii, and got
I must be missing something here, any help? If it helps any, set up with a raid 5 with 4 disks, ext4. it may be that i need to change the sdx6 to something different, but I am not sure. i still edited the /tmp/config/autorun.sh file, was able to save it, and chmod it...but i guess i didn't save it to the correct place, because I didn't mount whatever it is that mounting ext2 and such does, and didn't dismount, and after restart, still clicking.

appreciate the help.

-Valter

Pleae check the appropriate block device to be mounted with http://wiki.qnap.com/wiki/Autorun.sh. The original posted example was crafted for an Intel-based x86 system.

schumaku wrote:Pleae check the appropriate block device to be mounted with http://wiki.qnap.com/wiki/Autorun.sh. The original posted example was crafted for an Intel-based x86 system.

thanks for the heads up and quick reply. I have been trying to write back, but seemed the forum was down?

anyhow, followed all directions voodle50 wrote, except replaced sdx6 for mtdblock5, and everything seemed to take, but after a restart, it persists.

it is now driving me crazy. any ideas?

*more info: i tried running the script manually before the restart, got this:

valter wrote:it is now driving me crazy. any ideas?

Before seekong for workarounds - are your drives updated to the latest firmware? According to my notes, CC4H or newer firlware does help to get rid of the chirping.

Seagate Barracuda (1TB/disk platform) Firmware Update

Please contact Seagate support - it's not the NAS making the disks chirping or clicking unexpectedly.

the drives are now updated, still clicking. any thoughts before i go to seagate?