Do you power off your NAS when not in use?

[Mythokia]

I'm just wondering what the general consensus is on this. For me, I've always left my NAS running even if I'll be out of the house for the entire day to let backup jobs run, and I believe that it would be healthier on the disk drives to keep it spinning than having it constantly going through off/on cycles.

What are your opinions on this? Do you ever shut off your NASes?

 

[iwod]

What is the point of NAS when you power it on and off all the time?
I could have all my files stored and shared on my computer and only available when i turn it on.

So the answer is no. That is another reason why we use NAS instead of computer is because NAS are generally less power hungry.

 

[Mythokia]

I'm referring to the case whereby no one (assuming you're the only person using the network) is physically present, not on a "I need a file, let me turn on my NAS and then power it off again" basis.

I was just wondering if it made sense both in terms of disk lifespan and economically.

 

[matthi]

I wanted to leave my Netgear NV+ on all the time but since it's a little loud at night I bring it down. My Netgear Duo will hopefully overcome this little issue, so I will have it on 24/7.
Also, I agree with the fact it's probably better to keep disks on for a longer period of time, then to power cycle them a few times a day.

 

[thiggins]

I use the scheduled startup / shutdown on my Netgear NV+ and Buffalo LinkStation to power them down at night.

Both also have the idle drive spindown enabled.

 

[Brandon]

I currently use a FreeNAS setup, which I leave on all the time. Even now, my house has had no air conditioning for over a week and a half (FINALLY coming to replace it all today..) it and one other PC have been on, without anything else staying on (Gotta leave the Domain Controller on >.>).

I'm the type, when I need my files, I need them. The idea of a NAS to me, says that the files are always there when I need them, so why shut it off? I would probably have it auto-shut off, then turn on if I spent the time to set it up, but for now, it just stays on.

As for auto-start, you can easily do this in the bios these days, for shutdown, simple Cron job if nothing else. (For home-built NAS PC's)

 

[zsole]

I experiment with FreeNAS recently, and it is quite simple to start and shut-down it automatically: whenever a client on the home network logs into Windows, it sends WOL signal to the FreeNAS PC, therefore, data are available in about a minute (unless I can figure it out how to place all user profiles on FreeNAS, it is not a big delay, Windows isn't too fast either). On the other hand, a simple FreeNAS script pings all PCs on the network every 10 minutes, and if no PC answers, FreeNAS shuts itself down. In this way there is no need for pre-scheduled start and shutdown, and the whole process is completely transparent to the users.
As I'm getting more familiar with FreeNAS (I just finished adding virus scanner and plan to add the torrent client, checking out wake-on-WAN, remote backup, etc.), this ping approach will not be enough to decide on shutdown, but for a Windows guy like me it will take a while to figure these things out, and hopefully then I will be able to modify the shutdown script to check the running processes before shutting FreeNAS down.
Anyway, why run the file server if there is noone around to serve to?

 

[crashnburn]

I'd be really curious if its possible to have a

DIY Low Power RAID NAS. Atleast low power / shutoff when not being used / idle. Wake on LAN via Client Access would be better.

 

[zx10guy]

No thanks. I'd keep any NAS or SAN unit running 24/7. I've seen too many arrays drop drives when they were powered back up. If you ask storage professionals, they'll tell you the biggest stress they have is when they have to power up an array.

 

[crashnburn]

No thanks. I'd keep any NAS or SAN unit running 24/7. I've seen too many arrays drop drives when they were powered back up. If you ask storage professionals, they'll tell you the biggest stress they have is when they have to power up an array.

Does that include powering up from Idling / Standby / Low Power mode or powering on from OFF.

 

[zx10guy]

Does that include powering up from Idling / Standby / Low Power mode or powering on from OFF.

From my understanding, when a NAS or SAN powers down into a low power state by idling the hard drives, the platters come to a complete stop. In my mind, this is extremely detrimental to the bearings of the spindles as the constantly cycling of spinning of the platters has to cause the most stress on the bearings. I had a discussion the other day with one of the storage guys on my project about this high density storage array. I forget the manufacturer but they have a single 42U rack which has a capacity of something like 896 TB of storage. As we were discussing this, he said the company had some piece of software which "exercises" the drives to ensure they are constantly healthy from the default behavior of the storage array which is to power down unused drives. If the software detects an impending failure of the drive, it automatically forces a rebuild to a spare or issues an alert. To me this is just marketing crap and I can't see how some piece of software can "exercise" a drive to maintain health. The early drive failure detection is nothing special as it's just leveraging SMART built in to the SATA drives already.

I have a Compaq Proliant 3000 server I use as a NAS. The server runs FC4 and has 10 SCSI hard drives. After some issues with some used drives I purchased failing on me which were not part of the data volume but the system volume, the drives have been humming along without any problems for about 1.5 to 2 years now. The server in that time frame has only been powered down once. And Murphy caught up with me as the RAID controller took a dump on me. Fortunately, I had a spare and was able to just replace the controller and fire the server back up. I'll have to check what the current uptime is on the server but it wouldn't surprise me if the server has been running a year or longer. I also have the server on a UPS to ensure the server is protected from any abrupt power outages.

 

[vnangia]

I leave my FreeNAS running 24/7. I built it to be as low power as possible, and it draws about 80-90W with four drives. There are several fans, but in order to muffle it, I put the whole setup in a closet, and ran a power and network line to the closet. The net result is that I have a very quiet and fairly inexpensive NAS. In any case, once I did the math, it became pretty clear that even with the high cost of electricity, it would be about three years before buying a pre-built server like the NV+ or equivalent was more cost efficient. And I fully suspect that I'll have moved on to a more efficient processor by then!

 

[Madwand]

I have a file server running Vista configured for automatic sleep. It works well, draws very little power in sleep mode, and can be brought back up by just pinging it a few times.

 

[valentin]

I use the scheduled startup / shutdown on my Netgear NV+ and Buffalo LinkStation to power them down at night.

Both also have the idle drive spindown enabled.

Which linkstation version do you have? Mine is LS Live, v.2, it has neither scheduled shutdown, nor spindown time. Or did you changed the software on it?
________
EXTREME VAPORIZER REVIEW

 

[thiggins]

Which linkstation version do you have? Mine is LS Live, v.2, it has neither scheduled shutdown, nor spindown time. Or did you changed the software on it?

A very old HD-H120LAN Linkstation w/ 1.47 firmware.
Maintenance > Disk Sleep

 

[Dennis Wood]

In the enterprise setting, servers and storage arrays are run 24/7 as a rule, with typically no power management. Failures are not common. Thermal cycling is something that will affect the life of any electrical component...and particularly with lead free variants. That said, I suspect the added risk of failure is offset these days by the need to conserve energy, particulary as most hardware is tossed (but hopefully recycled) 2-3 years into the cycle.

So knowing this, in my own networks, power is off as much as possible...making wake on lan functionality very important. Manufacturers still have miles to go to bring standby power on all devices down to near zero. We're working on an off-the-grid house design ... so power management will be everything. I suggest making sure you have a disaster plan and off-site backup and keep devices off or in suspend state as much as possible..and support manufacturers that think this way