Score:0

Ubuntu

How to automatically power down internal HDD which is mounted and shared with samba?

Roland Deschain

1/27/24, 10:52 AM

I have recently bought an Intel NUC 12 pro to use as home-server, so now I am exploring the world of Linux a bit (so far I have only used Linux via WSL or for Docker).

I have managed to partition the additional internal 2.5" SATA Drive, set up a ext4 filesystem and automatically mount it to /mnt/mydrivename Additionally I set it up as samba share, so it is available on the Windows PCs at my home. All of this works fine so far, however I have noticed, that the drive does not seem to power down even when nobody is accessing the files and the home-server user is logged off.

On my Windows PC all internal Storage HDD will power down when not used for a while. So far I have read that hdparm is commonly used for this kind of setup. Is this the way to go, or do I need to unmount/stop sharing before the HDD can shut down?

104

1 + 2

mount

samba

power-management

hard-drive

22.04

Pilot6

1/27/24, 10:53 AM

Are you using Ubuntu?

Roland Deschain

1/27/24, 10:54 AM

@Pilot6 yes, Ubuntu Desktop 22.04 LTS

Score:1

Ubuntu

Pilot6

1/27/24, 10:57 AM

You can use Disks application to setup automatic power down.

Select your disk and click a buuton at the top right.

hdparm is the backend of this application.

You don't need to do anything else. Your disk will be powered up when it is accessed.

+ 10

Roland Deschain

1/27/24, 10:59 AM

Thanks, so far I have tried to stick to the terminal (mostly access via SSH from my Windows PC) :) I'll test this and mark the answer if it works!

Roland Deschain

1/27/24, 11:21 AM

Ok, so the problem seems to be, that while the disk is mounted it immediately restarts after putting it to stand-by. I tested this: 1) With disk mounted -> Disk Application -> Standby now => Disk will power down and immediately restart. 2) With disk NOT mounted -> Disk Application -> Standby now => Disk will power down and stay in standby. Is this behavior expected?

Pilot6

1/27/24, 11:23 AM

You don't do standby now. You set up idle timeout in drive settings.

Roland Deschain

1/27/24, 11:28 AM

Not sure I understand. There are two tabs, Standby and APM. I have set Standby to 10Min and APM to 127. Is this the wrong config? I thought "Standby now" is for immediately spinning down the device .

Pilot6

1/27/24, 11:29 AM

AAM is unrelated. You need the standby setting. You can set it to minimum and test how it works.

Roland Deschain

1/27/24, 11:40 AM

Set standby to 10s and disabled APM again. Drive still never is in standby. Only if I unmount it it goes into standby after the 10s.

Pilot6

1/27/24, 11:42 AM

It is confusing. There is no 10s setting and there is no APM. There is 10m and AAM.

Roland Deschain

1/27/24, 11:49 AM

I have added some screenshots to my question to hopefully clear things up a bit.

Pilot6

1/27/24, 11:55 AM

Try to use APM. But is is not a very good idea.

Roland Deschain

1/27/24, 11:57 AM

In that case I'll rather leave it running... Thank you for the help!

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