GitHub - Seagate/openSeaChest: Cross platform utilities useful for performing various operations on SATA, SAS, NVMe, and USB storage devices.
github.com
Cross platform utilities useful for performing various operations on SATA, SAS, NVMe, and USB storage devices. - Seagate/openSeaChest

Just want to share some love about Seagate.

My new DIY NAS is idle most of the time so I want to configure it to be as power efficient as possible.

I spent a couple of evenings trying to make my new WD Red Plus drives go to standby (spindown) after 30 minutes of inactivity, without success. I read about WD not respecting hdparm commands, interpreting them differently and tried all suggestions, again without success. I even read about WD support saying they don’t support Linux. Strange as most of the available consumer NAS systems are based on Linux.

I then decided to try my 2nd choice drives: Seagate Ironwolf. On the first attempt they also didn’t go to standby after configuring with hdparm. Then I found this: Seagate offers an open-source suite of tools named openSeaChest, which lets you configure and test your drives in any possible way including firmware updates and … tada, power settings. After enabling idle_c and standby_z and configuring the timers the drives now do how I configured.

I returned the WD drives. Now Seagate is my top choice for future drive purchases 🧡

  • slaecker@lemmy.worldOP
    1·
    8 months ago

    I did quite some research when I worked with the WD Red Plus drives and also tried the -S switch, without success.

    In openSeaChest I just set the number of milliseconds for each power mode and it just works. I’m happy with that.

    • TCB13@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      8 months ago

      You’ve to set BOTH things (-B and -S) with reasonable values in order for it to work.