[SOLVED] Can I spin down disks since I'm not using them?

[Admiral Awesome]

Hi,

I'm not able to physically remove those hard disks so I wonder is there a way to remotely shut them down/spin them down till I'll need to use them again in few weeks/months?



I'm already using pass-through in OMV VM that spins down one disk using APM (disk is used by Plex media server).



I guess I could just pass through those 4 disks to OMV and do the same, but because I'm not able to physically check if those disks are "down" - I don't know how to verify that. That is why I'm asking - how can I do it straight from Proxmox.

 

[Dunuin]

I don't think your OMV can spin down that HDD as your OMV is working with a virtual disk and not the real physical HDD. To spindown those real disks you would need to use hdparm on the PVE host.

 

[Admiral Awesome]

I don't think your OMV can spin down that HDD as your OMV is working with a virtual disk and not the real physical HDD. To spindown those real disks you would need to use hdparm on the PVE host.

Thank you for response. I've got two additional questions.

1. OK, so how would I be sure, that disks are actually off? How can I verify that not being physically by the server?
2. How would those turn back on again? Those disks would just get back online again right after I'll try to do anything at all with them? Or maybe with server reboot?

Sorry for stupid questions - I'm still learning.

 

[Dunuin]

Thank you for response. I've got two additional questions.

1. OK, so how would I be sure, that disks are actually off? How can I verify that not being physically by the server?
2. How would those turn back on again? Those disks would just get back online again right after I'll try to do anything at all with them? Or maybe with server reboot?

Sorry for stupid questions - I'm still learning.

Did you read the linked hdparm article?
There are examples on how to check the state of a disk without waking it up, how to stop and how to resume a disk.

 

[Admiral Awesome]

I'm sorry - I must have brain freeze that I haven't seen it.

Example output for curious:

root@pandora:~# hdparm -Y /dev/sdh


/dev/sdh:
 issuing sleep command
root@pandora:~# smartctl -i -n standby /dev/sdh
smartctl 7.2 2020-12-30 r5155 [x86_64-linux-5.15.107-2-pve] (local build)
Copyright (C) 2002-20, Bruce Allen, Christian Franke, www.smartmontools.org


Device is in STANDBY mode, exit(2)
root@pandora:~#

That is exactly what I needed. I'll also spend some time and write a script that will put those disks to sleep automagically. Great stuff - as always.

Thank you so much!