[xubuntu-users] Shutdown Hard Disks when Server Inactive

[David Collins]

I guess I should have submitted this to Ubuntu forums, since the
question is not xubuntu-specific.  Anyway, for anyone who is interested,
I did some more scratching around ..

According to the following, I may not be saving much power, anway.
These figures are for a laptop drive, though - a regular drive
presumably will use more power.

http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/hal/2005-August/003116.html

Here the power consumption data for a notebook harddisk (ide/sata):

Startup (peak, max.)		5.5W 	NC	
Seek						2.3W	2.7W	
Read (avg.)				2.0W	2.3W	
Write (avg.)				2.0W	2.3W	
Active idle (avg.)		1.1W	1.2W	
Low power idle (avg.)	0.85W	0.9W	
Standby (avg.)			0.2W	0.25W	
Sleep						0.1W	NC

It would be nice to have consumption figures on a regular IDE drive.
Maybe I'll look for a power usage meter to measure this stuff directly ?

If a drive really is only using about 1 watt when it is in Active/Idle
mode, then the main benefit of putting the drive in 'standby' would be
to increase the life expectancy of the drive.  (As long as the
start/stops didn't negate this.)

My original aim could be achieved using 'hdparm -S' (by
modifying /etc/hdparm.conf).

$ sudo hdparm -S 240 /dev/sdb
/dev/sdb:
 setting standby to 240 (20 minutes)

$ sudo hdparm -C /dev/sdb
/dev/sdb:
 drive state is:  active/idle

$ date
Mon Sep  1 10:49:14 EST 2008
.... more than 20 minutes ....
$ date
Mon Sep  1 11:14:36 EST 2008

$ sudo hdparm -C /dev/sdb
/dev/sdb:
 drive state is:  standby

Regards,
David Collins


> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> Message: 1
> Date: Sun, 31 Aug 2008 11:00:52 +1000
> From: David Collins <db.collins at yahoo.com.au>
> Subject: [xubuntu-users] Shutdown Hard Disks when Server Inactive?
> To: xubuntu-users at lists.ubuntu.com
> Message-ID: <1220144452.5937.13.camel at localhost>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
> 
> Hello,
> 
> I would like to leave my Xubuntu PC/Server running 24 hours a day in my
> home.  If I do this, then I would set up DNS, Squid and Apt-Cacher on it
> and configure all the other PCs in the house to use these services.  I
> would like to minimise power consumption, though, by turning of the
> monitor (I can do this manually, of course) and also by turning off the
> hard disks when they are not being actively used (which would amount to
> more than 50% of the time).  The disks would then resume when a client
> request was made to the server through the network.
> 
> This is quite different to the usual 'suspend' on a desktop PC that is
> resumed by pressing a key or clicking the mouse.
> 
> Is this idea possible in Ubuntu/Linux ?
> 
> Regards,
> David Collins


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