[mythtv-users] Spin up delay for HDDs

[Ramon Hofer]

On Sun, 25 Sep 2011 12:06:13 -0400
Raymond Wagner <raymond at wagnerrp.com> wrote:
> On 9/25/2011 11:35, Ramon Hofer wrote:
> > I'm concerned about my PSU. It's 460 W and in my server are already
> > 6 HDDs.
> > My idea was to delay the spin up of the HDDs.
> > I have a Netgear ReadyNAS which spins up the discs one after the
> > other. Google couldn't tell me how to do this manually. I only
> > found that some HDDs have jumpers that can be set to delay the
> > spining up.
> 
> What you're talking about is called Power Up In Standby.
> 
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power-up_in_standby

Thanks for the link.

Corresponding to the article the BIOS needs to support PUIS but it
tells that usually only RAID controllers support it. Therefore I
suppose the SATA controller I mentioned (Exsys EX-3403) nor my
main board (Asus P7P55D) supports it.

Beside the price I don't want to use a hardware RAID card because if it
breaks there may be no replacement for the controller.


> My RAID card has an option for staggered spinup, but I've never seen 
> that option in any other hardware.  On the handful of drives I have
> that support it using a jumper, attempting to do so simply resulted
> in them not being recognized by the card.  Right now, I've got a 650W
> power supply for fourteen drives, the RAID card, 4G of DDR3, and a
> dual core Phenom II.  With all drives spun up, I'm pulling maybe
> 150W, but I've just barely enough power to boot.
> 
> A previous incarnation used an old, power hungry, dual core Opteron, 
> with 2GB of DDR1, Geforce 6500, and the same drives and RAID card.
> With the increased draw from the processor, memory, and graphics, the
> drives were starved and not all would spin up.  I frequently would
> have to manually stagger the startup using the power buttons on the
> front of my hotswap bays.

At the moment I have a 2.5" drive for the system and five 3.5" driver
plus (in future up to) eight 3.5" drives which are fourteen too.
I have no graphics card in it but 2 TV cards. As you 4 GB DDR3 and an i3
CPU.

I wont buy all the eight drives at once. So I think I'll keep my PSU
and go for a bigger one when I have more drives.


> If you've got a bit of electronics capability or inclination, you
> might want to check out this project.
> 
> http://www.flickr.com/photos/linux-works/4320933179/
> 
> It uses a little microcontroller to manage staggered spinup from a 
> series of relays, and hooks into your motherboard reset button to 
> prevent it from POSTing until the hard drives have finished doing
> their thing.

Nice project.
But the downside is that I can't spin down the discs and sequentially
spin them up when they're needed again while the system is running.


Cheers
Ramon