HDD Spindown stopped working, state: active/idle

    Hi,

    I'm new to OMV and this forum.


    Today I saw that automatic spindown of my HDD (WD RED PRO 18TB) suddenly stopped working. It's the only HDD in the Ugreen DXP480plus.

    Thanks to HomeAssistant I found out, it stopped working end of december 2025!


    What I've changed:

    - I've updated from OMV7 to OMV8

    - Installed iperf-Plugin.


    Settings in GUI are unchanged (APM=1, 60min).


    To ensure that iperf-plugin isn't in charge, I've de-activated iperf-plugin. HDD spindown still not working.


    smartctl -s standby,now /dev/sda

    -> HDD moves to idle (checked with command: smartctl --nocheck stanby -i /dev/sda)

    -> HDD stays idle until I use a service (e.g. access WebGUI)

    -> That's the proof, that services / processes are not responsible for the dysfunctional spindown


    Since hdparm was not present in OMV8 I've installed it (apt-get update && apt-get install hdparm).

    Comand: hdparm -C /dev/sda -> Result: Device state ist: active/idle (this seems strange to me)

    Command: hdparm -S 180 /dev/sda -> Result: command executed without failures, but HDD-spindown doesn't work

    Command: hdparm -y /dev/sda -> Result: immedate HDD spindown, (hdpar -C /dev/sda results in Deive is in: standby mode)..


    I have no idea, how to cope with that problem.

    I'd be very thankful for help.

    If you need further information for diagnosis, please let me know.


    Best regards

    verstehnix

    UGREEN DXP4800plus / OMV8 auf 128GM NVME / SSD 990 EVO Plus 4TB / Western Digital Red Pro 18TB WDC WD181KFGX-68CKWN0

  • chente

    Approved the thread.

    The only reliable way to spin down drives on OMV/Debian was always to use hd-idle instead of hdparm/smartctl. At least for me...


    Thread
    [How-To] Spin-down hard drives with hd-idle

    INTRODUCTION

    If you like to spin-down your hard drives but you’re having trouble in doing so, you’re not alone.

    Not all hard drives like hdparm, the utility used by Debian and OpenMediaVault. There’s an alternative called hd-idle which does the job but introduces another issue: it will eventually fail if you use standby/hibernation on your server, plus other inconveniences.

    Hd-idle has been abandoned many years ago and was left in a buggy state, but we finally have a solution: a…
    auanasgheps

    backslash Thanks for the hint - hd-idle works like a charm!


    On the last try with smartmontools (APM-State 127, minimal accoustic, spindown 5 min) I hat an odd finding: spindown worked.

    Since my settings (APM=127/acoustic: not set/spindown 30 min) worked fine with OMV7 and WD RED Pro I wonder, if there is a bug in OMV8's smartmontools: Spinning down the HDD with OMV8's smartmontools only works when setting the spindown-time less or equal 20 minutes.

    UGREEN DXP4800plus / OMV8 auf 128GM NVME / SSD 990 EVO Plus 4TB / Western Digital Red Pro 18TB WDC WD181KFGX-68CKWN0

  • verstehnix

    Added the Label resolved

    For me it it has always been a hit and miss with the build in OMV/Debian tools, especially with WD drives and therefore I gave up at some point and sticked to hd-idle which works reliably since years here. Another plus of hd-idle is, that if you attach drives via USB and configure hd-idle like below then even temporary external drives will be spun down reliably without the need to configure them manually and/or individually.


    Code
    START_HD_IDLE=true

HD_IDLE_OPTS="-i 1200 -l /var/log/hd-idle.log"
    Quote from verstehnix

    Spinning down the HDD with OMV8's smartmontools only works when setting the spindown-time less or equal 20 minutes.


    That reminds me of when I first had trouble getting my disks to spin down even with hd-idle. You wouldn't happen to have active SMART monitoring enabled on a 20-minute schedule, would you?


    On my backup server (where disks only spin up once a day for a daily backup from the main server), I had to ensure that SMART monitoring is set to a greater time period than hd-idle, so the hd-idle timer wouldn't be "reset" by each SMART check before it was time to spin down the drives. That might do the trick here as well.

    Quote from cubemin

    You wouldn't happen to have active SMART monitoring enabled on a 20-minute schedule, would you?

    No.

    Quote from cubemin

    On my backup server (where disks only spin up once a day for a daily backup from the main server), I had to ensure that SMART monitoring is set to a greater time period than hd-idle, so the hd-idle timer wouldn't be "reset" by each SMART check before it was time to spin down the drives. That might do the trick here as well.

    Thanks for you advice, cubemin, I will keep that in mind.

    UGREEN DXP4800plus / OMV8 auf 128GM NVME / SSD 990 EVO Plus 4TB / Western Digital Red Pro 18TB WDC WD181KFGX-68CKWN0

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