Re: Automatic means for spinning down disks available?

On Tue, Apr 10, 2007 at 09:06:15PM -0400, Jules Gilbert wrote:
Boy, do I want answers too!

We have HD's that run 24X7. And I don't want to turn them off, I
just want them to sleep quietly until needed. We have lot's of RAM,
thus plenty of cache space.

Our machines are all blades. (Does this matter? I don't know.)
IBMs and Super-Micros.

We spend zillions of bucks on electricity; We use these machines
24X7 now, but soon will only need them about 12 hours a day. Is 24X7
operation the optimal strategy?

What's the best course here, wrt electric costs, and wrt disk failures?


Re disc failures, I recommend investing as many hours/days as
necessay to decide what it (abs) critical. Config files from
as many lcations as reqired, e.g. If you have a tape drive,
copy the critical files there. Buy as many 200-300GB dics as
required to cross-backup your important, but not necessarily
critical files. And cron ssh backups N times daily... N >=1.
(I bup some files twice a day.)

Power is not going to do anything but get more costly; at the
same time, if you lost all your data in a *poof*, how much would
you be willing to pay to have things back?

--A parenthetical note: yes, cross-backing up does pay off.
Recently, I mv'd a file (innocently, I thought) *over* another
files and lost a few hour technical work. LUCKILY, I had the
original file on my laptop!!!! {Whew} I almost lways save mods
by RCS { ci -l <foo>}... but .... --

--jg



On Apr 8, 2007, at 2:10 PM, Yuri Grebenkin wrote:

Just wonder if it's better for an HDD not to spindown at all.
Maybe it's safer to spin in peace than to park/launch?
What do you think?

Hello again all,
I was wondering if there was an automatic, and possibly timed
means to
spin down disks available in either ports or the base system, by
chance.
Just trying to cut down on energy use, and increase my disks'
lives :).
TIA,
-Garrett
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--
Gary Kline kline@xxxxxxxxxxx www.thought.org Public Service Unix

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