Find out which process prevents the hard drives from spindown

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Aspects of harddisk spindown problems

  1. Harddisk(s) do spin down after the configured timeout, but show unwanted regular wake ups, without being accessed from clients
  2. Harddisk(s) won't spin down at all


Find processes causing regular wake ups of hard drives

Manually check QNAP configuration:

  • Several QNAP services (Twonky, Music Station, etc.) can enable regular cleaning jobs that wake up hard disks from spindown. Check the configuration of these services, if they are activated
  • Automatically synchronizing QNAPs NAS time with an internet timeserver can wake hard drives
  • Having the QNAP NAS obtain IP address(es) automatically using DHCP can wake hard drives several times a day. Using fixed IP addresses can prevent unwanted spin ups
    (careful when changing the network configuration, improper network reconfiguration can prevent further access to the NAS)


Find processes preventing hard drives from spindown

  1. Download the diagnostic program from one of the following links:
  2. Copy the program to the Public folder of the NAS
  3. Login to the NAS by ssh port 22 with admin username/password. If you don’t know which ssh client should be used, you can try putty on the following link:
    http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/download.html
  4. After login, copy the blkdevMonitor.sh script to root folder by the following command:
    cp /share/Public/blkdevMonitor.sh /root
  5. Change the file to be executable by the following command:
    chmod +x /root/blkdevMonitor.sh
  6. Run the program by the following command:
    /root/blkdevMonitor.sh
  7. Wait for a few minutes(depend on your spindown time settings) to see if any process is accessing the HDD (WRITE block or READ block) or not. Send us the result for us to check which process wake the HDD.