Need Firmware to Enable JBOD Spindown SAS2208 Controller

[BigXor]

I currently have a Dell H710P with equivalent Intel firmware flashed and this allows spindown of Configured, Unconfigured and Hot Spares. But no spindown of JBOD's.

I'm switching to StableBit Drivepool + Scanner for my media file storage and Win 7 does not pass spindown command through the controller. (I've tried many different LSI based controllers and no luck with windows spinning down drives). Areca is the only controllers I've found that allows spindown, but Hard Disk Sentinel hates Areca controllers).

If anyone knows of a SAS2208 firmware that has JBOD spindown please let me know.

 

[BigXor]

OK, I fussed with Drivepool and Scanner until I was pulling my hair out and could never get them to work properly.

Sooo.... Back to hardware raid!

I no longer am looking for JBOD spindown.

 

[rubylaser]

Are you sure that scanner wasn't keeping your disks spun up? I have two IBM m1015's (SAS 2208) flashed to IT mode that I have no trouble spinning down the disks with unless a process is trying to access them. I use SnapRAID + mhddfs + smartmontools (with the option enable to not query the disks if they are spun down). Without disabling the SMART scan on spundown disks, they would continuously spin up.

It sounds like you've already made up your mind to go back to hardware RAID, so you probably aren't interested in investigating this any further, but I would have tried to indentify the culprit, i.e. without Drivepool or Scanner running do the disks spin down? If so, do they spin down with just Drivepool running? If so, is scanner preventing them from spinning down? Or, is it something as simple as the Windows defragmenter running when the system is idle?

Here's an older thread about the m1015 and spindown.
https://forums.servethehome.com/ind...th-drive-spin-down-ability-under-windows.413/

 

[BigXor]

I never got as far as worrying about spindown. I could not get some of the features of Drivepool to work on my new Gigabyte/Intel rig. I have used Drivepool many times before but on several different motherboards with complete success.

I have a media backup server, so I'm not concerned about using hardware Raid.

I was interested in the Stablebit Scanner data scrubber. I have had media files from time to time develop major blocking/pixelation. Usually media that's been stored for years and would have to buy the DVD again.

Maybe scanner will work on a Raid array?

 

[rubylaser]

That makes sense. I haven't used Drivepool as I typically use SnapRAID on Ubuntu for my bulk home storage.

Scanner should work on the RAID array.

 

[gea]

I do not use spindown (server never sleep..) and avoid hardware raid (I use ZFS and software raid - no write hole problem, less costs with a better performance) but I would expect that spin down needs to be done at a level where raid is done what means that with hardware raid this must be done/ should be done at controller level and with software raid at OS level.

 

[BigXor]

@gea: I'm using Win7 so ZFS is not an option for me.

@rubylaser: I will try scanner on backup media server. Bit rot is the major concern.

 

[gea]

Bit rot is the major concern.

To fight against, you need
- checksums on data + metadata
- a modern always consistent copy on write filesystem with scrubbing

while ZFS is the source of this new features, consider ReFS on Win 8.1
ReFS is quite new and not in par regarding features and performance but its on the right way.