TrueNas - How Can I Confirm that Pass-Through Drives Have Spun Down?

[iweinstein]

Hi All,

I'm running TrueNas within Proxmox 7.2-3 on a Dell T630 server. Within TrueNas, I'm using four pass-through drives (da1, da2, da3, and da4).

I'm trying to reduce power consumption and temps on my server, so within the TrueNas UI, I set each disk to spin down after 20 mins and to use Advanced Power Management Level 1. However, because these are pass-through drives (da1, da2, etc.) and not ada drives, I can't use this command to check whether each drive has spun down.

camcontrol cmd da1 -a "E5 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00" -r -

When I give this command, I get this response "camcontrol: error sending command"

Can someone please provide the proper command or method for confirming spin down on pass-through drives?

Thank you in advance !!!

Ira

 

[Dunuin]

I guess you used disk passthrough and not PCI passthrough of a HBA?
Then all your TrueNAS is working with are virtual disks, not the real hardware.
As far as I understand you then would have to set Advanced Power Management and spindown times using hdparm directly on the PVE node.
You might need to install hdparm first (apt update && apt install hdparm)and then edit it's config file. There are also examples in the /etc/hdparm.conf like this:

#/dev/disk/by-id/ata-WDC_WD10EFRX-68PJCN0_WD-WCC4J0998391 {
#        apm = 128
#        acoustic_management = 128
#        spindown_time = 240
#}

Also keep in mind that too frequent spinups and head parking might lower the life expectation of your disks.

 

[iweinstein]

I guess you used disk passthrough and not PCI passthrough of a HBA?
Then all your TrueNAS is working with are virtual disks, not the real hardware.
As far as I understand you then would have to set Advanced Power Management and spindown times using hdparm directly on the PVE node.
You might need to install hdparm first (apt update && apt install hdparm)and then edit it's config file. There are also examples in the /etc/hdparm.conf like this:

#/dev/disk/by-id/ata-WDC_WD10EFRX-68PJCN0_WD-WCC4J0998391 {
#        apm = 128
#        acoustic_management = 128
#        spindown_time = 240
#}

Also keep in mind that too frequent spinups and head parking might lower the life expectation of your disks.

Hi Dunuin,

Thanks for your reply and for the info about hdparm. I will look into that today.

There was no HBA card in my server, so I simply installed the hard drives in four of the front bays.

Do you know of any way to confirm whether the disks have actually spun down?

Yes - I agree about frequent spinups and head parking. However, this server will sit idle at least 10 hours each day, so I think a spindown after a 20 min delay makes sense.

Thanks!

Ira

 

[Dunuin]

Do you know of any way to confirm whether the disks have actually spun down?

See hdparm -C /dev/YourDisk or smartctl -i -n standby /dev/YourDisk