What's the deal with staggered spin up?

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Jeroen1000

Limp Gawd
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Sep 17, 2010
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Just as I thought to have all the bases covered I was thinking about the future:)

Powering up 20 (SATA) drives at once may overload the PSU because drives momentarily draw more power on start up. Check.
So which ingredients make staggered spin up work?

- A 'compatible' backplane?
- A 'compatible' controller?
- 'Compatible' hard drives?

I did a google and a forum search but I did not find a definitive answer about how to get something like this to work. Since I almost have Norcom 4220 case drive could start up in groups of 4 or something:). Yep call me confused:)
 
Still not made much progress.

Staggered spin up is mentioned on the Areca SATA raid controllers, but not with the SAS-controllers. I email them for some clarification.

The WD20EADS drives I'm planning on using, appear to have a PM2 jumper (power management 2) which is unique to WD-drives (I think...) but I've haven not found any success stories of people getting this to work. I think the BIOS needs to support it in order to spin up the boot drive, the raid controller needs to support it in order to spin up the array. In the event one does not use a raid controller the OS needs to support it as well.

Just my 2 cents. Probably all wrong lol.
 
What I would love is just a manual toggle switch for either individual drives or a caddy of 4/5 drives. I would put my computer to sleep/hibernate/turn off much more frequently if I didn't have to deal with spinning my disks up and down. Why can't I just keep them running? Also, this means that for your problem you can just turn them on a few at a time...I guess the only problem would come if the power was killed and it restarted on it's own - but with a good UPS that hopefully shouldn't happen.

This doesn't help you at all, just thinking out loud :p
 
Jeroen1000 said:
Still not made much progress.

Staggered spin up is mentioned on the Areca SATA raid controllers, but not with the SAS-controllers. I email them for some clarification.

The WD20EADS drives I'm planning on using, appear to have a PM2 jumper (power management 2) which is unique to WD-drives (I think...) but I've haven not found any success stories of people getting this to work. I think the BIOS needs to support it in order to spin up the boot drive, the raid controller needs to support it in order to spin up the array. In the event one does not use a raid controller the OS needs to support it as well.

Just my 2 cents. Probably all wrong lol.
Click to expand...

I know a bit about this from experience. There are 2 types of staggered spin, one uses an APM command and I think the other is ACPI. I have the WD20EADS and they do NOT support the more common APM spinup only the rarer ACPI spinup. The RE4s do support APM spinup, standard Seagate Barracudas and Hitachis support APM spinup too so it is most a WD problem,

WD do support ACPI spinup but most raid controllers dont. The only raid controller manufacturer I know of that supports ACPI/PM2 spinup is Highpoint.
 
Hang on, I'm on to something. I'll post in a little while. For the people that can actually solder and stuf this thing is heaven http://hackaday.com/2010/02/05/pre-spun-hard-drives/

Since I'm not at all good at it, I'm following up on the hint I got from Areca (they respond lightning quick to queries!).

Krobar, some more acronyms to google:). I'm following up on "pin 11" implementation on the SATA power connector. It doesn't seem to need any special wake up command like the ones you mention. If pin 11 is high (or left floating) the drive will wait to power up until PHY initialisation is complete. If pin 11 is low (grounded) the drive will spin up at once. All drives support PHY so no special command is needed (disclaimer: I might be talking out of my hat).
 
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Jeroen1000 said:
Hang on, I'm on to something. I'll post in a little while. For the people that can actually solder and stuf this thing is heaven http://hackaday.com/2010/02/05/pre-spun-hard-drives/

Since I'm not at all good at it, I'm following up on the hint I got from Areca (they respond lightning quick to queries!).
Click to expand...

If you have slightly older WS20EADS it would be much easier to just flash them with the RE4-GP firmware.
 
Also, I think you might be surprised with how many your PSU can power up. I have 10 of these drive in Pentium M based system with Adaptec 52445, power on peak is about 190W, complete system consumption is about 140W when spun up and 80W while snoozing. My point is that a single rail 650W PSU should handle simultaneous spin up of all 20 drives providing the rest of your hardware isnt too power hungry.
 
Krobar said:
If you have slightly older WS20EADS it would be much easier to just flash them with the RE4-GP firmware.
Click to expand...

Do continue please. I thought the flashing was to get the TLER feature. Which is why I'm buying those drives.
 
Krobar said:
I know a bit about this from experience. There are 2 types of staggered spin, one uses an APM command and I think the other is ACPI. I have the WD20EADS and they do NOT support the more common APM spinup only the rarer ACPI spinup. The RE4s do support APM spinup, standard Seagate Barracudas and Hitachis support APM spinup too so it is most a WD problem,

WD do support ACPI spinup but most raid controllers dont. The only raid controller manufacturer I know of that supports ACPI/PM2 spinup is Highpoint.
Click to expand...

I wanted to reply to this seperately when I knew what Krobar was talking about. The APM/ACPI spin up stuff is seemingly a similar software/hardware implementation just like the pin 11 method?
A major difference is that it seems to be also OS controllable like with HDPARM in the Linux/Unix world. WD implements this using a special jumper. It looks like a "hack/work around" to force the drive into stand by on power up.

The drive remains in stand by (sorry if it is not the correct term) until it explicitly receives the command to wake up. Either the OS can issue the command or something else can(system BIOS or the RAID controller). However, if the BIOS does not issue the command before the RAID controller wants to detect the drives they remain invisible. Obviously, the OS comes far too late to the party for it to issue the command. So it's either up to the BIOS or the RAID-controller and Krobar filled us in on the existing methods. WD uses the ACPI variant and RAID controllers generally do not support that. Bummer. This is option 1.

However, we still have option 2, which, unlike option 1, seems to be designed for the issue we are facing. Option 2 is the pin 11 stuff _unless_ are we talking about the same thing here? Is the PHY initialisation command = the APM or ACPI command? At any rate, I think this is a seperate method. That does not change our requirements: we need a BIOS or RAID-controller to support the pin 11 method and the hard drive must also support it. Perhaps we even need special cables...

@ Krobar: then there are 3 types of spin up? APM, ACPI and the pin 11 method. For the pin 11 stuff _something_ in the drives firmware must make sense of the pin 11 state (it must detect whether the pin is either low or high and then wait for the PHY command). Perhaps that thing is part of APM or ACPI.
 
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Jeroen1000 said:
I wanted to reply to this seperately when I knew what Krobar was talking about. The APM/ACPI spin up stuff is seemingly a similar software/hardware implementation just like the pin 11 method?
A major difference is that it seems to be also OS controllable like with HDPARM in the Linux/Unix world. WD implements this using a special jumper. It looks like a "hack/work around" to force the drive into stand by on power up.

The drive remains in stand by (sorry if it is not the correct term) until it explicitly receives the command to wake up. Either the OS can issue the command or something else can(system BIOS or the RAID controller). However, if the BIOS does not issue the command before the RAID controller wants to detect the drives they remain invisible. Obviously, the OS comes far too late to the party for it to issue the command. So it's either up to the BIOS or the RAID-controller and Krobar filled us in on the existing methods. WD uses the ACPI variant and RAID controllers generally do not support that. Bummer. This is option 1.

However, we still have option 2, which, unlike option 1, seems to be designed for the issue we are facing. Option 2 is the pin 11 stuff _unless_ are we talking about the same thing here? Is the PHY initialisation command = the APM or ACPI command? At any rate, I think this is a seperate method. That does not change our requirements: we need a BIOS or RAID-controller to support the pin 11 method and the hard drive must also support it. Perhaps we even need special cables...

@ Krobar: then there are 3 types of spin up? APM, ACPI and the pin 11 method. For the pin 11 stuff _something_ in the drives firmware must make sense of the pin 11 state (it must detect whether the pin is either low or high and then wait for the PHY command). Perhaps that thing is part of APM or ACPI.
Click to expand...

I'm not entirely sure of the eaxt types of spinup, good information is very difficult to find. There is a bootable dos utility (This was 6months+ ago and the name of the utility escapes me) I found that could power on the WD20EADS when jumpered so I know my Norco backplane and all hardware is wired for it, its simply a WD software method not supported by most raid controllers.
 
Blast, there might be another potential problem: the backplane.

4 SATA-connectors are grouped to 1 SAS-connector. As I got it, the drives are powered individually using that ping 11 method. I hope the backplane or mini-sas cables don't hamper the PHY signal...

Seeing your post above (funny as I was thinking about the same thing), which norco did you get? SAS or SATA backplane?
 
My Norco is using the mini sas connector (4 drives per connector) and works with PM2/ACPI. My guess is those backplanes work with APM too.
 
I admit I haven't done sequential power up since my AHA2940UW SCSI days. Back then the drive controllers woke up and reported right away when the HBA scanned the SCSI buses but only spun up the platter motor when sent a spin up command. It's key to point out that the entire drive isn't "off", the platter motor simply isn't spinning. There were never any special or additional wires required because the controllers powered up normally and responded to commands. The HBA BIOS had some options to tweak the power - you could disable the sending of power commands on a device-by-device basis at boot time if you wanted. I guess that would leave the OS to power them up later. If everything was left at default the HBA would scan/enumerate the SCSI bus, then it would proceed to power each drive in numerical order all while still at the BIOS stage.

SAS shouldn't be terribly different, as very similar command sets are still in use.

So..... You need compatible HDs which have jumpers to disable auto spin up. "PM" always was "power motor", not "power management". After that any decent SAS controller should support the notion of sending power up commands to the devices as it's been a standard command for decades.

Now SATA I'm not so sure. The command set is still SCSI based and mature, but I haven't noticed a whole lot of my drives with spin disable jumpers - at least not marked. The typical SATA world is plagued with crappy controllers and I haven't laid my hands on a good hardware RAID SATA controller to see what options exist in the BIOS.
 
I can say that my LSI SAS PCI-X cards at work do have the option for staggered spinup. I assume the newer fusion mpt cards have that as well. I am not sure about any others.
 
The drives need to play ball too. Otherwise they either don't spin up or ignore the command I guess.
 
I may be able to test a few drives on the sas controllers I have if you want.

I have
250 GB WDC SATA 1 drives (I am pretty sure these do staggered spinup)
320 GB, 500 GB and 750GB Seagate 7200.10s
500GB and 750GB Seagate 7200.11s
500GB and 1 TB WDC Black drives
2TB WDC Greens
2TB Samsung F4s
320GB Maxtor SATA1s
1TB Hitachi SATA2s
+ more drives I can not think of right now..
 
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There 2 types of spinup command work slightly differently.

The ACPI command that is used by Highpoint and some consumer drives which dont use the more mature APM command can acutally be set by software and doesnt necessarily need a jumper set. Highpoint controllers can program the drive not to spinup until told, moving a drive programmed this way to a controller without ACPI spinup support results in a drive that doesnt work.

Highpoint use ACPI spinup. Areca and Adaptec use APM. Not sure about others.

From the list above I know the 7200.10s, 7200.11s and Hitachis can use jumpered APM spinup. I suscessfully used these drives with my Norco and Adaptec gear as well as Tyan/Areca at work.
 
I'm particulary interested in the WD Greens 2TB. However, I wouldn't want you to damage your drives or something!

What makes you sure one drives supports it and the other does not?

There is a jumper on the WD drives that is supposed to enable PM2. I'm not quite sure how it works. But RAID cards seem to be unable to spin up the drives when this jumper is capped. This is what WD has to say (PDF found on their website).

PM2 Mode – To designate the drive as power-up in standby (power management 2 or PM2)
enabled, install the jumper shunt on pins 3 and 4. The mode enables controlled spinup,
mainly used for server/workstation environments operating in multiple drive configurations.

IMPORTANT: PM2 mode requires a compatible BIOS that supports this feature. If PM2
is enabled and not supported by BIOS, the drive will not spin up and therefore will not be
detected by the system.

I'm betting many RAID-cards do not support it and have "no compatible BIOS". Or PM2 IS infact the pin 11 thing and all RAID-cards that support staggered spin up should be able to spin up the drive.

The ping 11 thing can be either a jumper on the drive (like the above might me) or a specific firmware setting (needing yet again, an enterprise HDD).

If you could clear up this big mystery we should award you:p

big question: is PM2 = APM.
 
Krobar, Surly73 is saying APM is not PM2. And APM (advanced power management) is actually a lot older than ACPI.

:confused:
 
Jeroen1000 said:
Krobar, Surly73 is saying APM is not PM2. And APM (advanced power management) is actually a lot older than ACPI.

:confused:
Click to expand...

Yes that is correct. APM came long before ACPI.

PM2 with WD just seems to be a jumpered method of setting ACPI spinup. The jumper is not really necessay at all though since the only raid cards I know of that can use ACPI spinup can permanantly program WD firmware to use it anyway (With no need to set the jumper).
 
Jeroen1000 said:
I'm particulary interested in the WD Greens 2TB. However, I wouldn't want you to damage your drives or something!
Click to expand...

I am not so worried about damage. My biggest problem is time. I am very busy at work.

What makes you sure one drives supports it and the other does not?
Click to expand...

I would try to verify if the staggered spinup was actually working. I could set a long delay between drives and try to listen for drives spinning up. This will be easy for the old WDC 250GB drives but harder for WDC greens since they are quiet and my server room is definitely not quiet.. I could also test the power with a killawatt meter but I can not find it at the moment.
 
drescherjm said:
I am not so worried about damage. My biggest problem is time. I am very busy at work.



I would try to verify if the staggered spinup was actually working. I could set a long delay between drives and try to listen for drives spinning up. This will be easy for the old WDC 250GB drives but harder for WDC greens since they are quiet and my server room is definitely not quiet.. I could also test the power with a killawatt meter but I can not find it at the moment.
Click to expand...

I'll save you a bit of time:
WDC20EADS with 01.X firmware = No APM Spinup support
WDC20EADS with 04.X firmware (RE4 firmware) = Have APM spinup support (I have not verified this but others have)

All WDC20EADS work fine with the ACPI/Highpoint spinup method.
 
Would you say than that the APM method is the very same as the pin 11 described in the PDF? I got it from Areca so that is probably how they do things?
 
Krobar said:
I'll save you a bit of time:
WDC20EADS with 01.X firmware = No APM Spinup support
WDC20EADS with 04.X firmware (RE4 firmware) = Have APM spinup support (I have not verified this but others have)

All WDC20EADS work fine with the ACPI/Highpoint spinup method.
Click to expand...

Thanks. The WDC greens would have been more effort for me being that I have these at home and in use but the WDC black and old 250GB models along with the 7200.10s and 7200.11 drives would be easy being that I have spares of all of these available and a testing box with the sas card.
 
Jeroen1000 said:
Would you say than that the APM method is the very same as the pin 11 described in the PDF? I got it from Areca so that is probably how they do things?
Click to expand...

Assuming there are only 2 types of spinup, my guess is......
What I have been calling APM = Improved definition of controlling spin-up using pin 11
What I have been calling ACPI = Serial ATA Working Group original definition

My reasoning for this is that the Dos HD program I was using could activate the spun down WD20EADS 01.X firmware drive with a command being sent.

You have managed to make me curious again about drive spinup. I have just borrowed a Max Line 3 (Model: 7V250F0) from work. I will test it in my Norco/Adaptec setup with the various jumper settings and confirm results tonight.

I will also find out the name of the utility I was using that could spinup the WD 20EADS and ask the author how it does that.
 
This may sound confusing but here is how I see it: the pin can either be set floating in firmware (whether or not this is persistent accross cold boots or not is another issue) or it can be jumpered (this should work accross reboots).

Too bad there isn't a easy way to measure the pin.

I'm looking forward to your findings.
 
Update:

Iam unsure if the actual spinup command/phy intialization is any different between the two standards in the document.

Pin11 is only a way of making it easier to set staggered spin (Let the backplane decide), according to the PDF it still waits for phy initialization. Ie. from a raid cards POV it makes no difference which of the two standards is used as long as the drive doesnt powerup on power being applied, maybe you can confirm this with Areca?
 
What exactly should I ask them? I'm kind of confused on how to words things now lol.

I have emailed Areca and WD and asked to explain in more details how the stand by stuff works. I have asked:

- is the pin 11 method an implementation of either APM or ACPI or is it something different entirely.
- whether they know why their cards do not work with WD20EADS drives since the drives clearly support wake up from stand by (PM2 in WD lingo).

I asked WD what is required to wake their drives up. After having said that I know they are not RAID drives and that I don't really care they are not. That is no reason PM2 shouldn't be working on the Areca's anyway. I have also asked whether their PM2 is the pin 11 method and what how APM and ACPI fit into all of this.

Hopefully I can report back something interesting...
 
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I have gotten a reply from Kevin at Areca:

PM2, what WD uses is apparenlty differently from the pin 11 method. He could not elaborate on what that difference is (it could well be APM vs. ACPI). He also says that Areca does not support the PM2 stuff but we already knew that.

Waiting for WD now;). I'll bother Highpoint too. They should be able to tell me what the difference is as they support the WD method after all.
 
Ready for a long post? Get some coffee...

So, I'm still at it. I've found out that pin 11 should just be another way of supporting "power on in stand" by (PUIS). This way backplanes can support this clever feature (you see it does make sense:D) It's no different then setting a jumper or changing something in the firmware. I pieced this together and this is what drew me over the line (from HDPARM man page, see small writing). In all cases the hard drive firmware must support it. So, it does not really matter which technique is used to accomplish this (unless you screw up and set it in firmware and then can't access the drive any more lol).

-s Enable/disable the power-on in standby feature, if supported by
the drive. VERY DANGEROUS. Do not use unless you are
absolutely certain that both the system BIOS (or firmware) and
the operating system kernel (Linux >= 2.6.22) support probing
for drives that use this feature. When enabled, the drive is
powered-up in the standby mode to allow the controller to
sequence the spin-up of devices, reducing the instantaneous
current draw burden when many drives share a power supply.
Primarily for use in large RAID setups. This feature is usually
disabled and the drive is powered-up in the active mode (see -C
above). Note that a drive may also allow enabling this feature
by a jumper. Some SATA drives support the control of this
feature by pin 11 of the SATA power connector. In these cases,
this command may be unsupported or may have no effect.



Also, a drive in PUIS can be queried. With special messages it say's it is in that certain power mode. It should answer without spinning up though.
There are tools to enable PUIS for WD20EADS drives (apart from using the jumper). And... there are also tools to reverse this process.

So what's next? I'm going to try to find out why WD20EADS drives do not spin up on every type of controller when their PUIS jumper is set. That should offer some insight as to what is required on the controller side to make this happen.

It might be a bug, who knows...



@Krobar: did you by any chance use this tool http://www.hdat2.com/. A lot of things you have said make lots of sense know. I'll do my best to finish this story:)
 
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Major update this time. Full credits to go someone I contacted that was kind enough to explain this. I'm going to ask him whether he minds me mentioning his name.

There are in fact 2 methods that support staggered spin up. These methods are incompatible with each other.

1) PUIS (also known as POIS) is specified by T13 in standards like ATA/ATAPI-7, ATA8-ACS and ACS-2. This method is activated as part of the "SET FEATURES" command. Spin up is accomplished by sending a certain ATA-command. As we know, this can be activated in firmware or through the means of a jumper. Not all hard drives support this (as this is a fairly new feature).

2) Then we have staggered spin up by using pin 11. This method is specified by SATA-IO in the SATA Revision 2.5 specification (and 2.6 and 3.0 revisions also). Unlike the previous method, there is no query that will indicate whether or not your drive supports this. However, you should assume that every drive supports this:

a) If the P11 is not connected at the host, then the device shall not spinup automatically on poweron*.
The device powers on in a spun-down state, and spins up when the host sends a COMRESET

b) If P11 is asserted low by the host, then the device shall automatically spinup.

* leaving the pin floating might also be OK


This second method is the one most likely supported by RAID-controller vendors. I believe backplanes which explicitly support staggered spin up, ground pin 11 for you .If anyone feels adventurous, taping off pin 11 should enable staggered spin up for your particular drive.

Also, a thing that got me thinking is, WD-enabled staggered spin up via pin 11 by changing something in firmware; Perhaps pin 11 behaviour can also be influenced through firmware. But this is merely speculation on my part. Main thing is that this can be tested now.
 
@Jeroen1000: Pin 11 on the SATA power connector is and input TO the drive meaning that the backplane controls this pin!

If the backplane circuitry pulls pin 11 low, the corresponding drive will power up. If the backplane leaves this signal floating or pulls it high, the drive electronic will power up but the drive motor will not spin-up. That is if the drive attached to this connector supports pin 11 spin-up.

Multiport backplanes (e.g. 4 ports) that support this feature would sequentially pull the pin 11 of each connector/port low. Usually starting with the 1st, wait a specific amount of time and then pull pin 11 of the next port low, etc. This is usually done via open collector or open drain ports/outputs of a logic chip or controller on the backplane.

I got the impression from reading your posts that you think the firmware of the drives control pin 11 on the SATA power port. The drives receive a signal on this pin, they do not control this pin!

That is unless they use pin 11 as a drive busy indicator or activity output, in which case the drive pulls this signal low and a user can connect an external LED to this pin.

Also, I can confirm that the PUIS (PM2) feature if enabled via a jumper on WD20EADS drives (jumper across pins 3-4) do not work with an Areca ARC-1680i connected via HP SAS expander. The drives are powered just not spun-up and the SAS controller simply does not see the drives. I've also contacted Areca about this and they basically told me the same thing, they do not and most likely will not support this type of drive spin-up :(
This is something that Areca could implement in their firmware but I doubt they will. which is a shame...

Hope this helps.
 
treadstone said:
I got the impression from reading your posts that you think the firmware of the drives control pin 11 on the SATA power port. The drives receive a signal on this pin, they do not control this pin!

That is unless they use pin 11 as a drive busy indicator or activity output, in which case the drive pulls this signal low and a user can connect an external LED to this pin.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the correction treadstone. I did indeed believe pin 11 was firmware controlled (wrong) and was only present to tell a drive "do not spin up" (if pin 11 is aserted high or left floating) or "spin up" (if pin 11 is asserted low or grounded) and (here is where I went wrong also) that COMRESET had to be sent to the drive to spin it up thinking this was another ATA-command or something.

But it turns out that "sending" COMRESET is just a fancy word for a voltage change on pin 11 causing the drive to spin up (if the voltage is changed from high/floating to low on a pin 11 enabled SATA connector)?
treadstone said:
If the backplane circuitry pulls pin 11 low, the corresponding drive will power up. If the backplane leaves this signal floating or pulls it high, the drive electronic will power up but the drive motor will not spin-up. That is if the drive attached to this connector supports pin 11 spin-up.

Multiport backplanes (e.g. 4 ports) that support this feature would sequentially pull the pin 11 of each connector/port low. Usually starting with the 1st, wait a specific amount of time and then pull pin 11 of the next port low, etc. This is usually done via open collector or open drain ports/outputs of a logic chip or controller on the backplane.
Click to expand...

But what controls the backplane then? Or is this hardcoded, which I think it is not because you can change the intervals using RAID-controllers and enable/disable staggered spin up? Also, I can forget about staggered spin up when drives are connected to a backplane that does not support it?


treadstone said:
Hope this helps.
Click to expand...

It has. I'm finally catching up on this stuff:) thanks!
 
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Treadstone, I feel I must explain my previous post to you a little better because I feel my wordings are rather unclear (I'm Dutch, English is hard lol)

Bascially, you are telling me the backplane has to include special logic to support staggered spin up. This logic manipulates the signal (= voltage level) on pin 11 of the SATA power connector:

- The backplane logic sets the signal to high/floating and then changes the signal from high/floating to low after a a certain amount of time. This causes the drive(s) to spin up.

I'm down with that so far.

But how are we able to disable/enable staggered spin up using the management interface of the SAS-controller? How does the controller 'tell' the backplane to enable or disable staggered spin up and also, how does it define the spin up interval?

What I came up with is that the controller had to send a COMRESET command to a hard drive to get it to spin up. This way, the controller is in complete control (now that is why it's called a controller lol) about the timing interval.
In my scenario, the backplane would be a 'dumb' piece of hardware only capable of settings all 11th pins of every SATA power connector to high. Like a toggle switch for pin 11:)


So in short, I'm still a bit fuzzed on how smart this backplane logic is:). Is there some kind of protocol between RAID-controllers and smart backplanes then?
 
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Jeroen1000 said:
Treadstone, I feel I must explain my previous post to you a little better because I feel my wordings are rather unclear (I'm Dutch, English is hard lol)

Bascially, you are telling me the backplane has to include special logic to support staggered spin up. This logic manipulates the signal (= voltage level) on pin 11 of the SATA power connector:

- The backplane logic sets the signal to high/floating and then changes the signal from high/floating to low after a a certain amount of time. This causes the drive(s) to spin up.

I'm down with that so far.

But how are we able to disable/enable staggered spin up using the management interface of the SAS-controller? How does the controller 'tell' the backplane to enable or disable staggered spin up and also, how does it define the spin up interval?

What I came up with is that the controller had to send a COMRESET command to a hard drive to get it to spin up. This way, the controller is in complete control (now that is why it's called a controller lol) about the timing interval.
In my scenario, the backplane would be a 'dumb' piece of hardware only capable of settings all 11th pins of every SATA power connector to high. Like a toggle switch for pin 11:)


So in short, I'm still a bit fuzzed on how smart this backplane logic is:). Is there some kind of protocol between RAID-controllers and smart backplanes then?
Click to expand...

Hi Jeroen,

Adaptec is the same as Areca regarding WD spinup. It was HDat2 I used to spinup a jumpered WD drive, the drive was connected to my Intel SATA southbridge. HDAT2 could spinup a jumpered WD, it is only software support that stops the WD method working with Areca and Adaptec, Highpoint works with the WD method and the raid card bios can change the firmware setting for each drive.
 
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@Jeroen1000: No worries about your English, it's actually quite good!

There are two different methods for controlled staggered spin-up.

Hardware based via the SATA power connector pin 11 and Software (only if the firmware supports it) controlled via the HBA or RAID controller.

There might be some backplanes that have the necessary smarts (controller) to communicate or receive information from a HBA or RAID controlled via SES2 (I'm not sure though since I haven't looked at that for quite some time). IIRC the backplanes in my server do support staggered spin-up and it does have a controller and logic to take care of the timing. You can see some images of the backplanes with the controller and logic chip in my build-log (link is in my signature). But in general (and I think the Norco backplanes fall into this category), there is no controller on the backplane that is capable of receiving spin-up commands from a HBA or RAID controller. At best they have some logic to do staggered spin-up based on first power-up (e.g. similar to a hardware based reset).

The settings you have in a HBA or RAID controller for the staggered spin-up will send commands to the drives (in sequence and appropriately timed according to the settings you selected in the controllers BIOS) to instruct them to spin-up.
 
Do any of these support spinning down drives or is this staggered spinup only for the initial spinup? I ask because if the latter then the backplane would probably not need to communicate with the HBA for this.


Edit: I guess if you had 100 drives or just enough that the HBA was ready before the drives spun up then this could cause problems..
 
Darn, I'm still missing the obvious:eek:

You say:

IIRC the backplanes in my server do support staggered spin-up and it does have a controller and logic to take care of the timing
Click to expand...

Meaning the backplane takes care of spinning up the drives via pin 11 (setting pin 11 from high to low in sequence).

But then you lose me with

The settings you have in a HBA or RAID controller for the staggered spin-up will send commands to the drives (in sequence and appropriately timed according to the settings you selected in the controllers BIOS) to instruct them to spin-up.
Click to expand...

Here you are saying the RAID/SAS controller spin's up the drives.

You do say that there are 2 methods, however, I cannot see how the RAID/SAS-controller can influence pin 11. This doesn't make total sense to me unless you are talking about an older version of PIUS? (because PIUS like with WD drives is not supported by Areca). So I'm still left with the question: what are the spin up related commands in a SAS/RAID controller for (they are not controlling PIUS (not supported), and not controlling pin 11 (this needs a suitable backplane))?
 
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