Hard Disks do not spin down - QTS 4.2.2 Build 20161102

Discussion about hard drive spin down (standby) feature of NAS.
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iMactouch
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Re: Hard Disks do not spin down - QTS 4.2.2 Build 20161102

Post by iMactouch »

Hello!

Yesterday I installed 4.2.3 build 20170213 and now the disks are sleeping fine. :-)
runningnas
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Re: Hard Disks do not spin down - QTS 4.2.2 Build 20161102

Post by runningnas »

Updated yesterday, but still no HDD suspend. I then invested some time investigating the blkdevmonitor.sh output and eventually disabled two cron jobs manually. One was from the Surveillance Monitor (App is not installed, don't know how it went into the crontab), the other is the disk usage statistics gathering script disk_usage.sh, which runs every 10 minutes. I didn't found a way to disable that statistic gathering function via the UI (did I miss it?), so I had to disable it manually in the crontab.

Later on I could notice some drives to go to suspend, so this was at least a partial success. Have to watch it for a while now to see if it resolves my issue. I'm wondering if those crontab entries were there in the october firmware where HDD suspend was working the last time out of the box.

I'm a bit puzzled why the firmware offers a HDD suspend feature which it seems to sabotage by itself with that usage statistic.
Brent2017
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Re: Hard Disks do not spin down - QTS 4.2.2 Build 20161102

Post by Brent2017 »

My TS-251+ no longer seems to spindown/sleep anymore. I'm not happy with that because it used to work great. I have no need to have it on all the time.
manny2003
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Re: Hard Disks do not spin down - QTS 4.2.2 Build 20161102

Post by manny2003 »

runningnas wrote:Updated yesterday, but still no HDD suspend. I then invested some time investigating the blkdevmonitor.sh output and eventually disabled two cron jobs manually. One was from the Surveillance Monitor (App is not installed, don't know how it went into the crontab), the other is the disk usage statistics gathering script disk_usage.sh, which runs every 10 minutes. I didn't found a way to disable that statistic gathering function via the UI (did I miss it?), so I had to disable it manually in the crontab.

Later on I could notice some drives to go to suspend, so this was at least a partial success. Have to watch it for a while now to see if it resolves my issue. I'm wondering if those crontab entries were there in the october firmware where HDD suspend was working the last time out of the box.

I'm a bit puzzled why the firmware offers a HDD suspend feature which it seems to sabotage by itself with that usage statistic.
Just to be helpful I do not have any disk_usage.sh in crontab. This is mine on a 4.2.2 20161214 on HS-251+:

10 2 * * * /sbin/qthin_check
0 2 * * * /sbin/qfstrim
12 2 * * * /sbin/hwclock -s
7 2 * * * /sbin/vs_refresh
16 2 * * * /sbin/clean_reset_pwd
0-59/15 * * * * /etc/init.d/nss2_dusg.sh
17 2 * * * /sbin/clean_upload_file
20 2 * * * /sbin/notice_log_tool -v -R
22 2 * * * /bin/rm -rf /mnt/HDA_ROOT/twonkymedia/twonkymedia.db/cache/*
15 2 * * * /usr/bin/power_clean -c 2>/dev/null
0 3 * * 0 /etc/init.d/idmap.sh dump
4 3 * * 3 /etc/init.d/backup_conf.sh
* * * * * /mnt/ext/opt/netmgr/util/lock_timer.sh
50 * * * * /sbin/qddns_check 2>/dev/null

I have just tweaked the time of some scripts so that they run all around 2 am.
Qnap NAS: HS-251+ OS Ver. 5.0.1.2277 | HD: 2x WD40EFRX | RAID: 1 | Used OS: Windows 10 x64
Qnap NAS: TS-251-4GB OS Ver. 5.0.1.2277 | HD: 1x WD40EFRX | RAID: 0 | Used OS: Windows 10 x64
runningnas
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Re: Hard Disks do not spin down - QTS 4.2.2 Build 20161102

Post by runningnas »

manny2003 wrote: Just to be helpful I do not have any disk_usage.sh in crontab. This is mine on a 4.2.2 20161214 on HS-251+:
Interesting. I don't have a clue why mine had it. Sadly, although the blkdevmonitor doesn't show any user space initiated accesses anymore after the cleanup, the suspend state still isn't reached as it was with last year's october firmware. So it's still broken for me.
manny2003
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Re: Hard Disks do not spin down - QTS 4.2.2 Build 20161102

Post by manny2003 »

runningnas wrote:
manny2003 wrote: Just to be helpful I do not have any disk_usage.sh in crontab. This is mine on a 4.2.2 20161214 on HS-251+:
Interesting. I don't have a clue why mine had it. Sadly, although the blkdevmonitor doesn't show any user space initiated accesses anymore after the cleanup, the suspend state still isn't reached as it was with last year's october firmware. So it's still broken for me.
Not an answer maybe, but try to read this and see if it could be helpful in your case:
viewtopic.php?f=55&t=118677&p=551473&hi ... rm#p551473
Qnap NAS: HS-251+ OS Ver. 5.0.1.2277 | HD: 2x WD40EFRX | RAID: 1 | Used OS: Windows 10 x64
Qnap NAS: TS-251-4GB OS Ver. 5.0.1.2277 | HD: 1x WD40EFRX | RAID: 0 | Used OS: Windows 10 x64
ChuckDavis666
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Re: Hard Disks do not spin down - QTS 4.2.2 Build 20161102

Post by ChuckDavis666 »

There appears to be more than one cause of constant HDD activity, but I may have stumbled onto some information that might help identify at least one cause of constant HDD activity.

There is a fair amount of dumb luck and extensive testing behind these (reproducible) findings, but in a nutshell:

** Boot the NAS and don't log in - After a period of disk activity the disks spin down. Status LED is off and Disk LED's are green. The disks periodically spin back up and then spin down again, with no discernable timing or pattern. There can be 5-15 minutes between spin down and spin up. This may be normal.

** Boot the NAS, let the disks eventually spin down and then use SSH to log in (as admin) - After a period of disk activity the disks spin down. Status LED is off and Disk LED's are green. The disks periodically spin back up and then spin down again, with no discernable timing or pattern. There can be 5-15 minutes between spin down and spin up. This may be normal.

** Boot the NAS and log in (as admin) using the browser GUI - Constant disk activity continues with no spin down.

** Log out or let the GUI timeout back to the login screen. Disks spin down, etc.

Does anybody know of any process(es) that are started only when login is done using the GUI? Does anybody know of a way to determine what those process(es) might be?

I don't have much in the way of *nix chops, but it appears that the QNAP implementation of the ps command cannot show start time or elapsed time for processes, so there is no way to see which processes started before and after login. (I could probably do a before & after eyeball compare of ps logs, but I'm hoping there is an easier way.)

Is the periodic spin up/spin down normal or could I be dealing with several separate causes of constant disk activity? At this time the only user-controlled apps or processes that are being started at boot-up are: Qsync, MS Networking, FTP, SSH, UPnP, Web Server, Helpdesk, Network & Virtual Switch, Qsirch, CloudLink, JRE and Container Station (without auto-start of the CrashPlan container).

I have a (new) TS-451A with 8 GB of (Crucial) memory and 3X HGST Deskstar 5TB drives in RAID 5. I am running QTS 4.2.3 Build 20170213. There is a UPS connected to the NAS via USB.

I do have one Windows drive mapped to the NAS, but the program on the PC that uses that drive is not running. Acronis True Image 2017 backs up two PC's to the NAS in the middle of the night. The constant disk activity continues even with the Ethernet cables disconnected.

System Status | Disk Performance shows zero IOPS even during the constant disk activity.

I have had a ticket open on this issue with QNAP Tech Support for over a month, with no progress. I sent output from blkdevMonitor to them when I opened the ticket. It showed a lot of 1-sector and 8-sector writes from a small number of processes with some repetition of blocks. The most prevalent processes doing writes were md9_raid1, jbd2/dm-0-8, md1_raid5, kjournald and kworker/u4.

I would be very grateful if somebody could help identify the suspect process(es) for me (and QNAP).

Thanks!
ChuckDavis666
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Re: Hard Disks do not spin down - QTS 4.2.2 Build 20161102

Post by ChuckDavis666 »

See viewtopic.php?f=55&t=131538 for three factors that will keep drives from spinning down.

Also, see viewtopic.php?f=55&t=131537 for a probable explanation of what is causing constant hard disk activity on some systems.
eskdale
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Re: Hard Disks do not spin down - QTS 4.2.2 Build 20161102

Post by eskdale »

I have a TVS-473 with 4 raided hard drives and 2 500GB M2 SSD's. It's configured to use Qteir so all of its regular writes and reads should use the M2 SSD but even then just being logged into the UI on a Web browser and not do anything keeps the disks running. Nothing is inuse on the NAS and no drive mappings either. In fact if you have 1 of the SSD's not configured to be used you still see activity on its activity light. QNAP's response is it keeps copies of system files on all drives even those not configured for use.
ChuckDavis666
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Re: Hard Disks do not spin down - QTS 4.2.2 Build 20161102

Post by ChuckDavis666 »

Thanks! That is more information than I got from QNAP after having a ticket open for 2 months. In my opinion their Tech Support group is exceedingly useless.
Scott MS
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Re: Hard Disks do not spin down - QTS 4.2.2 Build 20161102

Post by Scott MS »

I am still running the 201609 firmware due to the spin down issue. I noticed that there were two new firmware versions released in April. I'm curious if either of these have corrected the spin down issue. I have a TVS-671 with six WD 8TB Red Drives. I actually do not run RAID. I have 3 8TB volumes on drives 1, 3, and 5, which are mirrored to drives 2, 4, and 6.

And, regarding the question about spin down, these 8TB drives get close to 114 degrees when spinning, which spins ups the fans, and creates more noise. I access this NAS 2x a day for backup and 23.5 hours per day the drives are spun down and it's quiet.
Moondiver
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Re: Hard Disks do not spin down - QTS 4.2.2 Build 20161102

Post by Moondiver »

Stories repeat :-(

With the new 4.3.3 firmware, in my NAS (251C) the HDD(s) doesn't reach standby. :-(
P3R
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Re: Hard Disks do not spin down - QTS 4.2.2 Build 20161102

Post by P3R »

Scott MS wrote:I actually do not run RAID.
There are hidden system partitions using RAID across all disks in a Qnap regardless of how you've configured the user data partitions.
I have 3 8TB volumes on drives 1, 3, and 5, which are mirrored to drives 2, 4, and 6.
The term mirroring usually refer to a RAID 1 configuration... :S
RAID have never ever been a replacement for backups. Without backups on a different system (preferably placed at another site), you will eventually lose data!

A non-RAID configuration (including RAID 0, which isn't really RAID) with a backup on a separate media protects your data far better than any RAID-volume without backup.

All data storage consists of both the primary storage and the backups. It's your money and your data, spend the storage budget wisely or pay with your data!
Moondiver
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Re: Hard Disks do not spin down - QTS 4.2.2 Build 20161102

Post by Moondiver »

Small update from my side:

I found out, that the new version (v2.1.170410) of Hybrid Backup Sync is the reason why my disks dont reach standby mode.
After stopping Hybrid Backup Sync standby is working again.

Anyone else has the same problem like me?
wynrod
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Re: Hard Disks do not spin down - QTS 4.2.2 Build 20161102

Post by wynrod »

Moondiver wrote:Small update from my side:

I found out, that the new version (v2.1.170410) of Hybrid Backup Sync is the reason why my disks dont reach standby mode.
After stopping Hybrid Backup Sync standby is working again.

Anyone else has the same problem like me?
Hi - yes, I have exactly the same issue, disks won't spin-down with fluctuating kernel_processes CPU seemingly preventing the standby mode from kicking-in.

I'm running 4.3.3.0154 (20170413) firmware however after a long period of disabling/enabling apps it came down to Hybrid Backup Sync v2.1.170410.

Hopefully this will be resolved in the next round of bug fixes.

TS-451A, 4.3.3.0154, 4x WD Red 3GB, MacOSX
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