Low noise & power build: HDD spin-down for external USB drives?

  • I'm like to build a low-noise and low-power-consuming NAS with OVM.


    I'd like to attach a couple of external 2,5" and have them act as a RAID for my data. OVM itself will be installed onto an SSD to prevent noise.


    Can OVM be configured in such a way, that the external HDDs will only spin up, when I'm actually accessing a file stored on them? The external HDD enclosure properly supports HDD-standby.


    Or will OVM regularly perform some kind of task (like indexing data) that might cause the drives to spin up during the day?

    • Offizieller Beitrag

    Or will OVM regularly perform some kind of task (like indexing data) that might cause the drives to spin up during the day?

    OMV does not do that. But some applications you might install will do that. PlexMediaServer for example.
    OMV uses hdparm to spin down the drives when not used.
    http://openmediavault.readthed…/disks.html#power-options


    I'd like to attach a couple of external 2,5" and have them act as a RAID for my data.

    Why do you want to have RAID?
    Search the forum for "RAID is not backup". Most likely you do not need (or want) RAID.
    Also search the forum for use of RAID in combination with external enclosures.

  • So the external drives will stay in standby as long as I'm not actively accessing them? Does hdparm work with every drive or is that a feature the HDD enclosure must support?


    My idea was to use the two external drives in RAID1 for redundancy in case a drive fails and have OVM backup the most important data of those drives to a webdav server.


    Or should I just use one drive as my main storage pool, schedule OVM to copy those files to the second drive (say every night) and also store them offsite using webdav?

    • Offizieller Beitrag

    So the external drives will stay in standby as long as I'm not actively accessing them? Does hdparm work with every drive or is that a feature the HDD enclosure must support?

    AFAIK it depends on the controller and the drives used in the enclosure.


    Or should I just use one drive as my main storage pool, schedule OVM to copy those files to the second drive (say every night) and also store them offsite using webdav?

    I use one drive as main storage and us the rsnapshot plug-in to create snapshots on the second drive. Doing this you are able to restore even previous versions of the files. And if you delete a file by mistake it is also no problem.


    I also do offsite storage at pCloud using webdav with Duplicati.

  • AFAIK it depends on the controller and the drives used in the enclosure.

    I use one drive as main storage and us the rsnapshot plug-in to create snapshots on the second drive. Doing this you are able to restore even previous versions of the files. And if you delete a file by mistake it is also no problem.
    I also do offsite storage at pCloud using webdav with Duplicati.

    Sounds good, going to take a look at the rsnapshot plug-in when I have OMV up and running. Does the plug-in create snapshots of the entire disk? Or can it detect incremental changes to individual files and only creates snapshots for those changes when needed?


  • I use one drive as main storage and us the rsnapshot plug-in to create snapshots on the second drive.

    Sounds good, going to take a look at the rsnapshot plug-in when I have OMV up and running. Does the plug-in create snapshots of the entire disk? Or can it detect incremental changes to individual files and only creates snapshots for those changes when needed?

    • Offizieller Beitrag

    The plug-in makes snapshots from shared folders. Each snapshot has a complete folder tree with all files. If a file has not changed since the last snapshot the plug-in creates an hardlink to the previous file. This way the additional space on the backup drive is only the space for the changed files.


    from rsnapshot.org
    "rsnapshot is a filesystem snapshot utility based on rsync. rsnapshot makes iteasy to make periodic snapshots of local machines, and remote machines over ssh.The code makes extensive use of hard links whenever possible, to greatly reducethe disk space required."

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