TS-253A: disks never go idle

[singularitykid]

Hi,

So there's an entire subforum dedicated to this issue. That's promising

I bought a TS-253A recently and the disks never go idle. I went over the relevant QNAP support pages and also disabled all kinds of stuff in the settings but nothing seems to fix it.

Activity logs are here: http://pasted.co/9f92e77e

(Ignore the log timestamps; I didn't get around to posting before now but nothing's changed).

If anyone can shed some light on what's going on, that'd be great.

Thanks very much!

[Philip_with1l]

Hi, singularitykid.
Just set up my TS-451A last week and started exploring the forums/reddit sub about the device and workarounds to customize it the way that I like.

I am also running in to this potential issue as well. I went through a couple of suggestive threads here and took the steps recommended. This included removing the shared folders from my file explorer, disabling UPnP, limiting media scanning to a specific time of day, etc. I've even restarted the Qnap and haven't logged in to decrypt it yet and I am still having the issue.
What really gets me is that when I was first exploring and setting it up, the drives *did* spin down after 15 minutes of no activity. Now, they are being pinged for 2 seconds every 15 seconds.
Quite aggravating. I look forward to what you find out or anyone else chiming in. I understand that NAS and NAS HDD's are meant to be on extensively. But they are also meant to spin down occasionally.

[Spider99]

Hi guys

well what have you setup on the app front and/or enabled in the control panel?

lots of things are doing legitimate things all the time - without information difficult to guess what it might be

spin down does work but only if you have limited apps etc - also its a great way to shorten the life of the disk

[singularitykid]

The most recent (non-beta) firmware update seems to have fixed it for me.

Confused the hell out of me when for the first time in 2 months my disks weren't instantly accessible but had to spin up first

[Philip_with1l]

Hey Spider99-
Thanks for the reply!
I have only set up the basic things, haven't launched VM's or containers or anything. I've gone back through and shut down some of the apps and have begun looking at the processes running.
I am still looking in to all of this via these forums here and the reddit sub.
I am coming to understand that spindown is a nice feature but is not expected or mandatory.
However!! I am becoming concerned about the constant writes to both disks when nothing is running. I would think that a runaway process with continual unnecessary writes would be considered as possible way of shortening the life of the drives.
What do you think?

[Spider99]

you will shorten the life of the drive more by spinning it down and then back up again - the spin up is the hardest thing a drive does - mechanically

as the disk is probably only writing small amounts of data not an issue - they are designed to be used and used a lot - and even more if you have bought the correct NAS spec drives

Merry Xmas

[ja666]

How did you calculate that? Let's say you spin your disk 24 times a day (that's a lot I guess), that makes 720 times a month, that makes 8600 times a year is that a lot
Let's compare to the cars: is starting your car engine the most engine-wearing activity? Why modern cars stop and start its engines at every crossing?
Let's compare 28 Watts of energy consumption (small NAS active) to 8 Watts (NAS idle in stand-by) to 1.8 Watts (NAS sleeps, most of the 1.8 Wats comes from idle power unit) - you may save up to 170 kWh of energy a year (40 EUR - 50$ ?).
Well, I live in Europe so I guess EU sooner or later will impose the great union directive of compulsory standing by / spinning the HDDs

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you will shorten the life of the drive more by spinning it down and then back up again - the spin up is the hardest thing a drive does - mechanically

[schumaku]

Let's compare to the cars: is starting your car engine the most engine-wearing activity? Why modern cars stop and start its engines at every crossing?

To lower the fuel consumption, and to reach whatever virtual limits in CO2 emissions, set by the politics. And I will not start a discussions about the CO2 lies here - read Wikileaks FMI.

Generating electrical power from fossil energy is simply stupid. Why is it still done in the times of CO2 "compensation" certificates? Because it's cheap, and it's maximising the cash in the inbox of the large organisations "manufacturing" electricity. Especially over night, and in low demand times, electricity can be bought at ridiculous low pricing - sourced from wind and for the sake of it nuclear plants, sources which have problems adapting the output to the power requirements. This power is sold to you at ridiculous margins, or used to store power, ie. to "charge" water power plants as we have many here in Switzerland. All your comparison to the cars s**s therefore.

A Samsung EVO 4 TB does take 0.07W fully idle, 0.28 W active idle, or some 2.7W in mixed read/write operations. Why are you (and many of us) are still using mechanical, magnetic HDDs? Because it's cheap. How much money would you save to your pocket in the electrical bill?

...and when I see how much electrical power ... from fossil resources ... are used "just" for climatisation to some 20 or 21°C in many areas of the world, or how much oil is used for worldwide transport in shipping over the seas ... you start to realize why I think the European politicians are blind.

IMG-20161225-WA0000.jpg

Go figure ...

[Spider99]

Nothing to do with energy or car engines - both irrelevant analogies - although starting your engine from cold is the most wearing aspect if the engine is maintained properly

For a hard disk motor startup is the most stressful aspect - inertia being just one factor and higher current draw being another

[P3R]

Let's compare 28 Watts of energy consumption (small NAS active) to 8 Watts (NAS idle in stand-by) to 1.8 Watts (NAS sleeps, most of the 1.8 Wats comes from idle power unit) - you may save up to 170 kWh of energy a year (40 EUR - 50$ ?).

Let's compare real numbers instead of fantasy ones.

Your 3 TB WD Reds use 4.1 W when active and the difference between active and spun down is 3.7 W so your difference in power use will be 3.7*2=7.4 W or 64 kWh a year.

But that's disregarding the internal housekeeping done by the NAS nightly and assuming you don't access your NAS at all (and then it would be much more frugal to have it powered off) so more likely 30-40 kWh a year, which would be with your energy pricing at most €9.41 a year I think.

[P3R]

For a hard disk motor startup is the most stressful aspect - inertia being just one factor and higher current draw being another

Add to that the thermal stress of the whole disk when it's constantly warmed up, cooled down, warmed up, cooled down...many times a day.

[ja666]

You are right when it comes to wattage when in HDDs standby: wattage measured with power-meter gives 20.2 Watts, when NAS sleeps power-meter shows 2,3 Watts, when NAS is powered-off meter shows 1.8 Watts (incl. external power-unit).
20 Watts when NAS in idle (standby) it's a lot, I expected much lower value
So the proper way is to go through 'sleep' command'
Unfortunatelly the only way I know to put TS-x69L series to sleep is to send a QFinder Pro command, which means you need an access to active workstation when putting NAS asleep.
NAS front button function (to put asleep rather than to power-off) or firmware auto-sleep mode would me much more convenient for a lot of SOHO users.

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Let's compare real numbers

[schumaku]



QTS4.2

QTS 4.2.2 Build 20161214

[Bug fixes]

- Fixed an issue where using myQNAPcloud service would make x86-based and ARM-based models unable to enter disk standby mode.

This could be the answer to some ...

[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.

[kherr4377]

you will shorten the life of the drive more by spinning it down and then back up again - the spin up is the hardest thing a drive does - mechanically

as the disk is probably only writing small amounts of data not an issue - they are designed to be used and used a lot - and even more if you have bought the correct NAS spec drives

Merry Xmas

every disk that i lost on a desktop was when i was turning the box on ........ that surge is a mother ..