HBA Controller with Drive Spin Down ability under Windows

[KamiSh]

Hello,
I read with great interessed your forum. And with so many experienced contributors maybe someone can help me.
I am looking for an 8 port HBA Sata or SAS Controller. It should run in IT mode as I don't want to use raid. Very important is the ability to pass through the OS signals to spin down the hdds. And I would like to use green drives. I already have some Samsung HD204UI.
I tried an SuperMicro AOC-SAS2LP-MV8, but it would not spin down the drives, although SuperMicro says differently. Have you any other suggestion?

 

[nitrobass24]

Well SASLP supports spin down as does the IBM M1015 (a favorite around here).

If it wasnt spinning your drives down, I would look at the drives themselves or even your OS config.
Windows for example is going to run defrag when the filesystem is "idle" so the drives wont spindown nearly as often because the OS is accessing the drives in the background.

 

[KamiSh]

Thank you for your answer! All my drives connected to the SAS2LP spin down when connected to the motherboard. While the drives on the SAS2LP didn't spin down, the drives on the mobo do at the same time. And as the SM support said that there is no setting to enable spin down, I can't see how i could have messed things up.
Concerning IBM M1015 I believe I read at some point, that it does not support spin down. I think there was a comment somewhere in the forum and elsewhere that LSI does not support it on their cheaper controllers.
So I would be glad if someone has another tested idea for windows 64bit. Has anyone tried the Adaptec RAID 6805E? As they advertise the power management. Would it be any good?

 

[mobilenvidia]

Additional information

M10xx - SAS/SATA Controllers
Power Save Technology was first introduced in firmware 20.1.1-0059.
In firmware 20.10.1-0052, the user can enable/disable the Power Save Functions for Unconfigured and Hot Spare Drives. The Power Save Function is turned off for Configured Drives. This means that the user cannot enable Power Savings for these drives. By default the Power Savings are enabled for Unconfigured Drives, but disabled for Hot Spare Drives.

In the future release of firmware 20.10.1-0058, the Power Savings will be enabled for Unconfigured and Hot Spare Drives by default.

M50xx SAS/SATA Controllers< Power Save Technology was first introduced in firmware 12.7.0-0020.
In firmware 12.12.0-0056, the user can enable/disable the Power Save Functions for Unconfigured and Hot Spare Drives. The Power Save Function is turned off for Configured Drives (this means that the user cannot enable Power Savings for these drives).
In firmware 12.12.0-0065, the user can enable/disable the Power Save Functions for Unconfigured drives only. The Power Save Function is turned off for Hot Spare and Configured Drives. This means that the user cannot enable Power Savings for these drives. Applications (CLI, MSM) will return "unsupported" error responses if users attempt to access or change the settings for Hot Spare and Configured Drives.
Note: In firmware 12.12.0-0065/20.10.1-0052, the firmware logs may display some Power Saving entries, but the these are informational messages and the user can safely ignore those entries.

Hmmm, IBM have not got these in their FW matrix, but some digging and here they are:

M5000 12.12.0.0065 FW with fix

M1015 20.10.1.0052 FW with fix, 0058 FW not released by IBM yet.

But in the readme for both FW is this:

1.2 Limitations:
- Rollback to a previous firmware level is not supported. Doing so
could cause damage to the controller and/or dataloss.
- Power save technology is not supported on any physical or logical
drives.

Go figure, wonder if this is a standard readme that IBM has not updated.
I'll have a look at my 5015 later tonight if it has the feature and is workable

[UPDATE]
My 5015 running FW 12.13.0.0104 (CacheCade v2.0 FW) has in Windows MSM, Power settings the ability to toggle 'Unconfigered' and 'Hot Spare' Drives, can't enable configured drives.

[UPDATE II]
Just tried IBM 12.12.0.0065 and no being able to set Configured drives to spin down

 

[KamiSh]

Thank you mobilenvidia for all your work!
As I am rather new to all that. What is the differents between Configured drives and Unconfigured drives? Are the Configured Drives the one in a raid? Would that mean, running the card without raid my the drives should spin down?

 

[mobilenvidia]

Configured = drives in an Array or on a non RAID card JBOD (JBOD I can test once my M1015 turns up)
Unconfigured drives are on the controller but not in an array or JBOD

Interesting stuff, just installed the SUN FW 12.12.0.0048 on the M5015 and I now have 3 power options, Configured, Unconfigured and Hot Spare now can all spin down

In the controller BIOS
When setting up the array there are options to what level of power saving you want incl using the cache as much as possible to stop/delay spinup
You can also do this for already setup arrays.

Curse LSI for making all these different versions, why can't they just have the features available in the BIOS but defaulted to safety.

 

[KamiSh]

When you talk of JBOD, do you mean the drives are accessed directly as an independent drive or a concatenation of multiple drives?
Just to verify, because I found that JBOD for some has the first for some the second meaning.
I myself just want independent accessed drives.
Would be great if you could test it, when your M1015 arrives. If it works I would buy a M1015, too.

 

[mobilenvidia]

JBOD is just pass through for each drive, the RAID controller just passes everything through to the drive.

The M1015 does this automatically, any drive not in an array or hot spare is JBOD
The M5015 does not do this, every drive has to be in an array/hot spare for the OS to be able to see it or it is unconfigured.

 

[KamiSh]

Thank you mobilenvidia!
Than I wait patiently till you have your M1015 and you can make some test. When do you expect it?
Of course any other suggestion would be very wellcome!

 

[mobilenvidia]

It should have been here week before last.
I'm starting to get a little concerned now.

 

[KamiSh]

I hope you will get it soon.
I know how annoying it is to wait for a delivery!

 

[akitamostodos]

Hello I need help, I have a adaptec 78165 24 hdd controller, I have on hba but the problem is I can't spin down disk, when spin down disks after a time are spin up again!!!. The problem is the adaptec because the disk connected to dashboard keep spin down.


Thanks.