Energy-efficient backup (?)

[DA]

I keep finding myself going back to some very old backups and thinking:"I
did not need this file for 3-5-10 years and all this time the hard drives
it was on were spinning, wasting some energy and, importantly for me,
heating the room (not a very efficient A/C here)"

I wonder if a solution like this exist: instead of one large 2TB HDD the
files are stored on a number of smaller hard drives. Normally the drives
are off. A backup software, or better yet, a file system, would know where
a file that's being requested is located and turns this HDD on, waits for
spin-up, reads the file, waits some time in case something else is
requested from that HDD and if nothing was, shuts it off.

Well, maybe the actual sequence of events could be a little different but
the point is: the system is pretty much dark all the time except for (very
rare) times that a file is needed, which is when it's woken up and then
shut down again shortly thereafter.

Is there maybe an NAS that can be woken up via LAN and then shuts down? Or
maybe some RAID controller that spins drives off if they are not used?

What do you think can be involved in creating a system like this if a
ready-made solution does not exist?

I would appreciate any comment or suggestion on this!

Thanks!

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[Brian Cryer]

I keep finding myself going back to some very old backups and thinking:"I
did not need this file for 3-5-10 years and all this time the hard drives
it was on were spinning, wasting some energy and, importantly for me,
heating the room (not a very efficient A/C here)"

I wonder if a solution like this exist: instead of one large 2TB HDD the
files are stored on a number of smaller hard drives. Normally the drives
are off. A backup software, or better yet, a file system, would know where
a file that's being requested is located and turns this HDD on, waits for
spin-up, reads the file, waits some time in case something else is
requested from that HDD and if nothing was, shuts it off.

Well, maybe the actual sequence of events could be a little different but
the point is: the system is pretty much dark all the time except for (very
rare) times that a file is needed, which is when it's woken up and then
shut down again shortly thereafter.

Is there maybe an NAS that can be woken up via LAN and then shuts down? Or
maybe some RAID controller that spins drives off if they are not used?

What do you think can be involved in creating a system like this if a
ready-made solution does not exist?

I would appreciate any comment or suggestion on this!

I use a USB disk for backups and the disk seems to go to sleep (and spin
down) if its not been used for a while, and automatically spins up on
demand - which means it can be very slow to get the first file/folder. Its
an external seagate - but not all usb seagate drives exhibit this behaviour.
Sadly I don't know what this is called, but assume its a drive function to
go to sleep. Certainly in Windows you can configure the length of time
before Windows spins a drive down (assuming its not being used) and I think
the same functionality is available in *nix (assuming the drive supports
it).

Hope this helps as a starter ...

 

[DA]

DA had written this in response to
http://www.talkcomputer.com/hardware/Re-Energy-efficient-backup-77633-.htm
:
Brian Cryer wrote:

I use a USB disk for backups and the disk seems to go to sleep (and
spin
down) if its not been used for a while, and automatically spins up on
demand - which means it can be very slow to get the first file/folder.

Thank you for your suggestion, Brian. Yes, I think I've also seen USB
drives that spin down when not used. The one I have (WD) does need a
little more time to serve a file after a long period of inactivity but its
external power supply is still warm all the time which makes me think this
method might not even give much power saving. Well, in any case, I'll have
to check if this one does actually spin down - not sure exactly why the
delay with the first file.

I'm now thinking of the same idea applied to a completely
power-independent storage like DVDs (or Blu-rays for that matter). Let's
say that the access time is of no importance - you've not needed the file
for 10 years, you can wait for another 10 minutes to load,mount,read the
drive. But what would be important is to know which exact DVD the file's
on. So, the question is: is there a file system (or a backup software that
emulates a file system and can be mounted as a drive) out there that keeps
the information about files names on a particular volume and generates
something like "Put volume ID:XX-YYYY in drive X" if you request a file
from that volume?

If anyone has any suggestion or comment on how to implement something like
that, I would greatly appreciate it!

But yes, an external USB storage that spins the disks down if unused might
be good thing to start with, to. Thanks again, Brian.

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[VanguardLH]

Path: ...!news.flashnewsgroups.com-b7r7O56ecyItM!not-for-mail

flashnewsgroups:
- A commercial service that hides behind a private domain registration.
Hiding is done for suspect reasons.
- 3rd tier provider using Highwinds as their Usenet backbone provider.
- Uses an invalid hostname (injection node) in their PATH header.
- They bribe their users to get more users. See:
https://www.flashnewsgroups.com/referfriend.php
https://www.flashnewsgroups.com/cgi-bin/affiliates.cgi

From: DA <[email protected]>

Violative use of a domain in the right-id token that is NOT owned/leased
by the OP or by flashnewsgroups.

Sender: DA <[email protected]>

Hmm, might flashnewsgroups.com be a remailer service? Else, why the
need to include the Sender header when its value is not different than
the From header?

User-Agent: Hermes V1.2

Anyone heard of an NNTP client named Hermes? If not, it looks like the
OP is lying about her NNTP client.

Message-ID: <[email protected]>

right-id token doesn't match the injection node in the PATH header.

I keep finding myself going back to some very old backups and thinking:"I
did not need this file for 3-5-10 years and all this time the hard drives
it was on were spinning, wasting some energy and, importantly for me,
heating the room (not a very efficient A/C here)"

I wonder if a solution like this exist: instead of one large 2TB HDD the
files are stored on a number of smaller hard drives. Normally the drives
are off. A backup software, or better yet, a file system, would know where
a file that's being requested is located and turns this HDD on, waits for
spin-up, reads the file, waits some time in case something else is
requested from that HDD and if nothing was, shuts it off.

Well, maybe the actual sequence of events could be a little different but
the point is: the system is pretty much dark all the time except for (very
rare) times that a file is needed, which is when it's woken up and then
shut down again shortly thereafter.

Is there maybe an NAS that can be woken up via LAN and then shuts down? Or
maybe some RAID controller that spins drives off if they are not used?

What do you think can be involved in creating a system like this if a
ready-made solution does not exist?

I would appreciate any comment or suggestion on this!

You never bothered to mention WHICH operating system you are using. In
Windows, just use a power scheme that spins down the hard disk(s) when
they haven't been used for some time. You can use the pre-existing
power schemes included in an installation of Windows or define your own.
Remember that spinning up a hard disk incurs a surge current greater
than during its normal use and when already spinning, so you don't want
the idle interval so short that you end up repeatedly spinning down the
hard disks and then spinning them back up.

Backups should NOT be saved in the same partition as where are the files
you are backing up. In addition, the backups should be saved on a
different hard disk that for the hard disk on which the OS resides. If
the OS hard disk fails, you replace it and use the backups on the other
hard disk to restore your OS. If the backup hard disk fails, you
continue using your OS and can replace the backup hard disk at your
leisure. Because the backup hard disk is a different device than your
OS hard disk, the power scheme will spin down the backup hard disk when
it hasn't been used within the configured idle period while the OS hard
disk continues spinning (unless you also leave it unused for the same
configured idle time).

The solution is performed with software by using the power modes
available in your unnamed operating system. It isn't specifically a
hardware issue. Power modes available in NAS depend on the embedded OS.
For USB-attached devices, go into whatever is the device manager for
your unnamed operating system (devmgmt.msc for Windows) and make sure
the root USB hubs are configured (enabled) for power management.

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x/ _| |( . )| |_ \x
|_| ---*|_|

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