I have several Seagate ST3000DM00x drives connected in an array on an Adaptec 6405E controller. The setup is used for backups, and as such, is idle most of the time.
Everything with HDsentinel works fine, I love the software. But I'd like to reduce the power consumption on the drives by having them go into standby or spin down when idle for extended periods.
I've set the HD Sentinel Advanced Power Management to level 1 on all drives (with auto adjust), and I've set the Logical Drive -> Power setting in the MaxView array management software to Enabled/slow down after 10 minutes/power off after 30 minutes.
However, I can't find any way to confirm that either is having any effect at all. The temperature of the drives seems to stay the same all the time, and I can't see any way to confirm that the drives go to standby at all.
Am I doing something wrong? Is there any way to get HD Sentinel to report power saving status directly?
How to confirm power management action
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hdsentinel
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Re: How to confirm power management action
Generally the Information page shows the power state of the disks.
It should be "Power state = active" when the disk is active (spinning) or "Sleeping since ...." when the disk drive detected as sleeping.
But yes, I can confirm that when RAID controllers used, they may manage power settings on their own - and the above mentioned status detection may not be possible at all because it is not possible to get this information independetly for each disks configured as RAID. While Hard Disk Sentinel may able to access these disks (for example to detect their status and also to manage the internal power settings) the RAID controller may
- not provide the required information
- wake up the disk drive (just to detect if it's spinning or not...) which makes no sense
So in this case, this field may be missing - as then we (and Hard Disk Sentinel) can't really determine if the drives are really in sleep state or not.
Yes, what you did is perfect: if you adjusted the internal power management of the drives and configured the controller then they should enter sleep mode.
It should be "Power state = active" when the disk is active (spinning) or "Sleeping since ...." when the disk drive detected as sleeping.
But yes, I can confirm that when RAID controllers used, they may manage power settings on their own - and the above mentioned status detection may not be possible at all because it is not possible to get this information independetly for each disks configured as RAID. While Hard Disk Sentinel may able to access these disks (for example to detect their status and also to manage the internal power settings) the RAID controller may
- not provide the required information
- wake up the disk drive (just to detect if it's spinning or not...) which makes no sense
So in this case, this field may be missing - as then we (and Hard Disk Sentinel) can't really determine if the drives are really in sleep state or not.
Yes, what you did is perfect: if you adjusted the internal power management of the drives and configured the controller then they should enter sleep mode.