[mythtv-users] Linux software raid question

Roger Heflin rogerheflin at gmail.com
Tue Jun 3 19:35:57 UTC 2008


Clay wrote:
> --- Matt Nelson <matt at frozenatom.com> wrote:
> 
>> On one of my mythtv backend servers I host my
>> fileserver that stores all of
>> my media on two raid5 sets totaling 12 drives that
>> are all attached via
>> sata.  These are all attached externally, and that
>> is where my question
>> lies,...
> [thread hijack]
> How do you keep all those external SATAs awake?
> I have a SATA PCi card with one internal and one
> external connection (though both cables actually hang
> out of the box.) The drives spin down after awhile and
> refuse to spin up again. I've tried Seagates, WDs,
> Maxtors... they all do it.
> Wreaks havoc on shutdowns too, since the OS
> (apparently) can't umount a drive that's not spinning.
> What's the secret?
> && hot swap? fergetaboutit!
> Anyway, apogolies for the OT reply.
> 
> (M be/fe) GA-8I945G-MF, P4 631, CNPS7000,(2)KVR667D2N5/1G, WD 250GB, Seagate 500GB, SHM-165H6S, 7300GS,(2)PVR-150, Feisty 7.04, MythTV 0.20.2
> (S fe/be) GA-8IHXP, P4 3.06,(4)256mb pc1066,(3)WD 120GB, Seagate 500GB, 7600GS, Aver A180, Edgy 6.10.

You might try adding a jumper on the drive to spin-up on power up, that may 
disable spin-down.

I am using some 9 month old 500GB WD drives and I have not had any issues with 
them spinning down, and they have been idle for fairly long periods of time.

sdparm/hdparm *WILL* work on sata disks if you have a new enough version.

If it is still an issue, you may be able to "touch" the disk every so often with 
some command that really does nothing to keep it awake.

On some of the really new disks there is supposed to be a dos utility that will 
permanently turn off the spin down features (and probably some other things) on 
WD drives (the tool is from WD, other disks companies likely have similar tools).

                                 Roger



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