ODROID HC2 + OMV 5 = no wake or HDD spindown

1st Official Post

    So I bought an Odroud HC2 recently, running a 10TB Barracuda Pro hard drive in it. Installed Armbian (not a big fan), would rather just install OMV "bare metal" but (since there seems to be no way to do that now) whatever.

    Problem is I can't seem to get spindown to work reliably. It works one time if I set it under the Disks section, set to spin down after 5 minutes if there is no activity, but then it doesn't work a second time. If I change one of the parameters, it works again the 1st time, but not afterwards. Very annoying.


    I've tied playing with Suspend from the Power Menu & that works no problem, but then can't figure out how to wake the system, since apparently the HC2 doesn't support WOL (great choice ODROID).


    Any ideas?


    Thanks!

    • Official Post

    You need to set spindown in the SATA/USB bridge firmware. This is described on the Odroid site.


    https://wiki.odroid.com/odroid-xu4/software/jms578_fw_update


    It is possible that changing any of the physical disk properties in OMV makes the hdd behave strangely and unmount and refuse to remount. This is because OMV use the utility hdparm to set the values. And some hdds, not all, are incompatible with hdparm. YMMV.


    I don't think WOL works on anything but x86, but I could be wrong.

    Isn't there a spindown time automatically set in the bridge firmware already? Or is the default 0 so that it doesn't spin down at all?

    How do I upload the updater to the HC2?


    Thanks!

    • Official Post

    Yes, there is a spindown set in the firmware. It is a couple of minutes.


    You may have disabled it inadvertently by changing settings in OMV. Try to not change anything except if you really, really, REALLY must. Especially the physical disk properties.


    If you follow the link and read there, you should be able to figure out how to reflash the firmware. I could, and I am really old and dense... There are several threads and posts about it here as well.

    My old QNAP TS-420 with Marvell CPU has WOL. I used to have an Odroid XU4 and whilst WOL wasn't possible wake by RTC was, so may work on HC2 also.

    Inwin MS04 case with 315 W PSU

    ASUS Prime H310i-Plus R2.0 board

    Two port PCI-E SATA card

    16GB Kingston DDR4

    Intel Pentium Coffee Lake G5400 CPU

    Samsung Evo M.2 256GB OS drive

    4x4TB WD Red NAS drives + 1x4TB + 1x5TB Seagate drives - MergerFS pool

    Seagate 5TB USB drives - SnapRAID parity x 2

    So I bought a 10TB WD MyBook and shucked the drive to use as a backup in another HC2. I managed to figure out how to flash the FW in both HC2's to set spindown to 5 minutes, but it doesn't seem to be helping drive temps.


    It seems like the disks in the drives stop spinning after 5 minutes, but the drives get hot. After spindown the WD gets to about 40C & the Seagate to about 45C. I've had to unplug them last night until I figure this out because I didn't want them getting any hotter. I think Odroid made a mistake not giving the HC2's a power button that could turn these things on/off.


    I actually had to point a small Vornado fan at both drives when the Seagate was transferring files to the WD so they wouldn't get ridiculously hot. Not a problem if your only transferring a few GB of data at a time, but not 7TB worth of data.


    So, how can I get temps to normal (mid 30C?) when the drives aren't in use without having a floor fan pointing at them full blast?

    Not sure what I'm going to do about the high 35-40C temps the drives are under, even when the platters are spun down, and the drives aren't being used. Don't really want to have a fan constantly blowing on them. Sort of defeats the purpose of the HC2. If I put them back into a PC (node 304) running OMV, at least then they can be powered on/off.


    It's easy to power them off thru OMV web GUI, but REALLY wish there was an easy way to power the HC2's on, without constantly having to unplug/plug them back into the AC adapter. The high drive temps are a deal-breaker.


    Anyone have any ideas for easily powering on the HC2's with them being plugged into the AC & turned off?


    There being no power button & not supporting WOL was a double-bonehead move by ODROID AFAIK.

    • Official Post

    I heard some flip the HC2 upside down. So the cooling flanges are up, not down.


    25-40C is considered ideal HDD operating temps, I believe.


    You might want to place the HC2 in a cool place. I have most of my HC2s stacked together in a bookshelf and a single Noctua ULN fan sucking air through them. And they are all on 24/7. At night they run unattended backups. And after a while the drives spin down.

Participate now!

Don’t have an account yet? Register yourself now and be a part of our community!

Register Yourself Login