Odroid HC2, HDD and questions

  • Hello


    I just gave a try to OMV on an old Atom mini PC and I'm impressed by the ease of use and the flexibility of OMV. Really great !


    Now I need something more serious. My needs are quite basic:
    1) backup of personal data
    2) media library for a Kodi box


    I already have an external backup (through ssh) located at my workplace, so I believe a single disk NAS is OK for me (different places, different systems: the probability of a simultaneous fail looks negligible to me).


    It looks that the Odroid HC2 is among the best choices for price/performance/energy efficiency. I read this post Which energy efficient ARM platform to choose? and I learned a lot.


    About the above post by tkaiser, what does mean "local storage performance" ?


    My main question for now is the choice of the HDD. I need something around 4To, but I'm a bit lost among the different characteristics (speed, cache...): what are the important things for use in an OMV NAS ?


    Also the HC2 accepts both 2.5" and 3.5" HDDs, but 3.5" ones are usually cheaper. Is there any advantage of using a 2.5" ?


    Thanks a lot !

  • About the above post by tkaiser, what does mean "local storage performance" ?

    Without network being involved. Let's take an ODROID HC2 and a RPi 3B+ as example:


    • Local storage performance with HC2 is up to 400 MB/s with a fast SSD (as every HDD out there is slower the HDD and not the USB/SATA interface is the bottleneck here)
    • Network performance with HC2 is up to 940 Mbits/sec in both directions (fully saturating Gigabit Ethernet)
    • As a result overall NAS performance is around 100 MB/s in both directions. If it's lower then usually the HDD is the bottleneck (with 2.5" HDD that are full of data the HDD itself slows down to way below 100 MB/s)


    In contrast RPi 3B+:

    • Local storage performance under ideal conditions is limited to 37MB/s (the RPi 'storage interface' is the bottleneck)
    • Network performance with the RPi 3B+ is limited to around 300 Mbits/sek (the RPi 'network interface' is the bottleneck)
    • Since all Raspberries are just a joke with the NAS use case in mind overall NAS performance is only around 20 MB/s since both network and storage are behind the same single USB2 port which serves as an impressive bottleneck screwing everything related to NAS up)


    Is there any advantage of using a 2.5" ?

    Lower consumption (at lower performance of course). If I would opt for 2.5" I would go with the HC1 instead since slightly lower consumption (no DC-DC conversion circuitry on HC1 and as a result prone to undervoltage)

  • HC1 / 2, I think you will be satisfied. If you want to have more freedom in terms of HDD, choose HC2.
    If you prefer something more compact, then HC1. I have HC1 with 2.5, 5400rpm. It is not the fastest when the disk is full (50MB/s).


    With 3.5 you have more room for maneuver when it comes to capacity and price. The question is whether you will need more than 4TB in the future. If not, and price does not bother you and you do not need 3.5 go for HC1 and possibly some 5TB 2.5 even ST5000LM000. Otherwise, HC2 and even some cheap 3.5. I would not invest in ssd unless you want to have completely silent equipment.



    If it was not for the price, I would add 4TB ssd to my HC1. :)

    • Offizieller Beitrag

    No. Not needed.


    You might want the cover to make it look nicer.


    And get a good A1 certified micro SD card. I use a SanDisk 32 GB A1 card. (Almost the same price as the 16GB card.)


    Avoid changing the physical disk properties of the Ironwolf. It may cause problems. Otherwise I am very happy with my HC2s with 12 TB Ironwolf HDDs.

  • You might want the cover to make it look nicer.

    I personally prefer to flip the whole thing by 180° so that the heatsink is on top (allowing for slightly better heat dissipation of the whole setup) and the HDD lying on a rubber mat. But the HC2s are hidden in cabinets anyway since even the low disk noise annoys me too much :)

  • Yes I read the post about A1/A2 SD cards, thanks.


    Adoby, indeed I read that you disabled all power management settings in OMV GUI, and instead used the firmware update tool to set the spindown time, is that correct ?


    The HC2/HDD will be hidden in the TV bench that is semi open at the back, so heat dissipation should be OK.

    • Offizieller Beitrag

    Adoby, indeed I read that you disabled all power management settings in OMV GUI, and instead used the firmware update tool to set the spindown time, is that correct ?

    Yes. Otherwise the default spindown delay may be to fast, just 2-3 minutes. There is a short delay every time the drive spin up, that can be annoying if it happens too often. I set my spindown delay to 30 minutes.

    • Offizieller Beitrag

    Here is the link for the FW update:
    https://wiki.odroid.com/odroid-xu4/software/jms578_fw_update


    and here one for disk parking:
    https://wiki.odroid.com/odroid…eshooting/shutdown_script
    @Adoby are you using this script? Any experience to share?

  • Old wd reds had a problem with very often parking. With this util you can fix that http://idle3-tools.sourceforge.net
    I got wd red 4tb made in july 2018. Parking already set to 5 minutes so problem is solved. But i changed it to 10 minutes with "idle3ctl -s148 /dev/sda --force"


    Also you can change cpu speed with this util https://github.com/mad-ady/odroid-cpu-control
    Downclocked first four slow cores from 1.5ghz to 1.4ghz and four fast cores from 2.0ghz to 1.6ghz.
    In cpu stress benchmarks was 76C, now 64C. With slow speed 140mm fan it is even lower (gain 4-7C) https://forum.odroid.com/viewt…&t=32674&p=248910#p248910
    No speed degradation in my use case. Same 95-120MB/s via samba. Also tested with games install from hdd iside pc and from my new hc2 with wd red via 1gb Lan.
    Also be sure nothing is prevent hdd from sleeping. All additional config and cache folders (docker, qbittorrent, duplicati, etc) should be on microsd card. Its brain storm to have OS installed on a microsd card. And flashmemory plugin solve only 50% of problems.
    My next sbc for anything will be on ssd, nvme, eemc, whatever, but not microsd. I should always control that nothing is killing microsd card and same time nothing is awlays using hdd.

    Sorry for my english i hope my words is useful for you.

  • Also you can change cpu speed with this util github.com/mad-ady/odroid-cpu-control

    No need for 3rd party software. Simply adjust /etc/default/cpufrequtils to 1400 MHz and you're done (until next time Armbian's board support package gets updated since this still overwrites user adjustments in /etc/default/cpufrequtils).


    You might also gently massage the PCB with HC2 powered off for better heat transfer from SoC to the heatsink (at least one of my 2 HC2 was affected by this and I got several degrees lower temps)


    BTW: idle3-tools try to address the 'WD LCC issue' which is not related to the spindown issues with JMS578/HC1/HC2.

    • Offizieller Beitrag

    and here one for disk parking:
    https://wiki.odroid.com/odroid…eshooting/shutdown_script
    @Adoby are you using this script? Any experience to share?

    On my first HC2, with the old FW, I had problems with noise (clanks) and SMART "Load Cycle Count" and "Power Off Retract Count" increasing after HDD spin down/up.


    The script fixed the clank, but not the Load Cycle Count. It kept rising by one for every spin down/up.


    The new firmware fixed both. I have not used the script on my new HC2s with updated FW. They don't clank as they spin down/up. And Load Cycle Count is no longer increasing every time the drive spin down/up. I still reflashed the FW on the new HC2s to increase the spindown delay.


    I don't know if there is a clank on power down. I don't think so. I don't power down. SMART seems OK!


    However my observations may be tied to the my HDDs. It is easy to check to see if the SMART values increase with every spin down/up.

  • Also you can change cpu speed with this util github.com/mad-ady/odroid-cpu-control
    Downclocked first four slow cores from 1.5ghz to 1.4ghz and four fast cores from 2.0ghz to 1.6ghz.
    In cpu stress benchmarks was 76C, now 64C. With slow speed 140mm fan it is even lower (gain 4-7C)

    I can ask why?


    Thermal shutdown is probably around 120 degrees if I remember correctly. I had them twice.
    For me, the governor is on ondemand and all the cores sit on 600Mhz (46c) and they only get up when it's needed.
    In contrast, 1.5Ghz / 2Ghz are hard to maintain because around 60 degrees throttling occurs to 1.4 / 1.8 from what I see on my HC1


    So out of curiosity, what's in favor of setting 1.4 / 1.6Ghz? Neither is it the minimum nor we have an optional maximum.

  • what do you mean by "massage the PCB" ?

    Pressing gently on the upper PCB side to potentially fix the thermal paste beneath. Hardkernel had such issues several times, see e.g. https://forum.odroid.com/viewtopic.php?t=27665 (with one of my two HC2 temperatures were some degrees lower afterwards)


    Wrt cpufreq: With default OMV/Armbian settings at idle the CPU cores will be clocked at 600 MHz. Only when there is demand (ondemand governor) the CPU cores will clock higher. With pure NAS workloads limiting them to 1.4 GHz or 1.6 GHz doesn't cause any performance drops but reduces energy consumption and heat.


    I tested and documented all this stuff in my review of ODROID HC1 over at Armbian forum a while ago.

    • Offizieller Beitrag

    @Adoby, why don't you use the OMV GUI to set your spindown delay ?

    Because if I do the drive is unmounted and it wont mount when I reboot.


    The reason is that OMV use the program "hdparm" to send commands to the drive. And some drives seem to be incompatible with hdparm. Especially new big NAS drives. Like my 12TB Ironwolf.


    For some drives hdparm may work perfectly fine. I'm not sure if this is true on all systems or if it is especially on a HC2, with that SATA/USB bridge. Or perhaps it is just extra bad on a HC2?


    It took me a few days of experimenting, and perhaps a 5 installs, and at least 10 restores of the SD-card from backup, to figure out exactly why my HC2 suddenly refused to mount the drive. Or suddenly unmounted the drive. First I just experimented blindly. Finally I started a fresh install and configuration. And did it in many tiny steps, just one small thing at a time, with a full reboot between every tiny step. And then I figured it out pretty quickly...


    As long as I didn't touch physical disk properties at all, my HC2 with OMV worked perfectly. As soon as I used it, and changed anything, my HC2 with OMV was unusable.

Jetzt mitmachen!

Sie haben noch kein Benutzerkonto auf unserer Seite? Registrieren Sie sich kostenlos und nehmen Sie an unserer Community teil!