Any operating system for nas with advanced power saving features?

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wixter

Weaksauce
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So for a long while I would have liked to place all of my media files onto a NAS but my original thinking was to procure a chassis large enough for multiple 3-4TB drives so that I could place them into a large RAID6 array for some degree of protection.

Well, recently I got to thinking about it again and realized it wouldn't really matter if I had RAID6 because even if a drive failed I could replace what was lost on it rather easily. So in taking this approach instead where I would simply just have multiple drives connected to the motherboard, this seems easier and cheaper since I wouldn't need a RAID6 controller.

However I am still faced with one problem. Currently my media files that are stored on hard disks are offline a majority of the time, as in not powered up at all. If I built a nas and threw all of my existing hard disks in there, I would need some kind of advanced power management.

What I had in mind was that the PC/NAS itself would remain in full sleep mode almost all of the time, as in everything powered down. When it received a request from my media player hitting its IP address, this should wake up the machine and ONLY power on the hard disk that the player is trying to read. I want to keep the hard disks powered off at all times unless specifically needed. As the drive is online and the player is reading the files, once the player has finished and is shut off, I need the drive to power off within say just a few minutes. That means everything, the hard drive, the cpu, the cooling fans, etc.

I tend not to use applications like Plex or Windows Media Server; I simply have the files within subdirectories on the disks ready to be read.

So that's basically the scenario I envision. I admit I've never had to work with Windows before under such circumstances so I have no idea if it's even capable of specifically doing what I'm looking for. I also don't know enough about Linux power management capabilities either.
 
I havnt used it, but dont some NIC's have WOL or something? It wakes up if it gets a signal?

As far as the HD's, if the system powers up, everything will have power but not necessarily be used.
 
The WOL feature is pretty common now and can "resurrect" a sleeping PC so that your media player can connect to it. A problem you may run into is making sure your media player knows how to send the WOL signal. When I first setup my WD TV Live SMP I was surprised to learn that it knew how to send the WOL after a few seconds of trying to connect to my PC. However once I built my NAS I have just let it stay on 24/7. If you build a low power NAS you can get one that will only take $20-30 to run for an entire year. As such I didn't feel it was worth trying to shut it down. With that said I will be interested to see what solution you come up with.
 
Yes, the WOL feature I am familiar with; I should I have specifically mentioned that earlier. But the important part is keeping everything powered off unless directly accessed. I was thinking just putting the OS on an SSD, then all the other drives would be thrown in, but that still leaves the power issue.
 
If all you want is straight up file transfer capability without any transcoding or media server capability, all you really need is an Atom or Zacate board. An Atom of Zacate board will use negligible power even if left on 24/7. Heck, even a full fledged Sandy or Ivy Bridge chip will sip power at idle, but if you really want to conserve power, an Atom or Zacate is all you need.

As for other sources of power draw, for a NAS this means fans and drives.

Fans are easy, especially for an Atom or Zacate solution. I would argue that a single large diameter fan at low or moderate RPMs will be enough for the drives and the APU. Power draw here would again be rather negligible.

As for the drives, well these are going to be your biggest power draw in a NAS. And just about every OS, NAS OS or otherwise, I have used allows for drives to spin and even power down when not in use.

Point being, over-thinking your NAS's power draw is becoming unnecessary. For the vast majority of users out there, a NAS can be left on 24/7 without the need to tinker with WOL, which can be problematic depending on the devices in use.

As for Atom versus Zacate:
Generally, consumer Zacate boards offer more SATA ports than consumer Atom boards, but the Atom server boards are what I would really recommend for NAS use. The Supermicro D525 boards have dual Intel NICs and six SATA ports, plus an internal USB header, which is perfect for an internally mounted flashdrive for the NAS OS. Just be sure to note that they are FlexATX boards and not true mITX boards.
 
Thanks for the feedback. Yes I have considered that a mini-ITX or microATX board would possibly suffice for this setup. I've previously built systems using that architecture so I have experience there. I also have used large diameter fans across multiple hard disks, like 120mm or 140mm across 4-5 drives, I have no objections doing this.

But I'm still not sure if everyone understands what I'm looking for...if the system is not in use, it should be in deep sleep which means hard drives stop, all fans stop, etc. It is essential that there is no air movement even because I don't want additional dirt moving through there. Even with filters, there's dirt in the air that will have to be cleaned periodically.

Every PC I've used, when it wakes up from sleep, has spun up all of its drives. I don't want that to happen. I only want it to spin up only the drive that is being accessed from the media player. As far as I know, that's usually where the OS has control and I guess I haven't played around with Windows or Linux enough for something so specific to know if those OSs are capable of doing that.
 
I currently have the OS on a USB drive leaving the 6 SATA ports strictly for drives. I will see if FreeNAS offers the ability to power down combined with WOL. As for only spinning up the one drive that is needed after going to sleep that I wouldn't begin to know where to look.
 
wixter said:
Every PC I've used, when it wakes up from sleep, has spun up all of its drives. I don't want that to happen. I only want it to spin up only the drive that is being accessed from the media player. As far as I know, that's usually where the OS has control and I guess I haven't played around with Windows or Linux enough for something so specific to know if those OSs are capable of doing that.
Click to expand...

Are you sure about this? I have a box that I leave on 24/7 and access over the network to get my media. The box has 12 drives in the main box. All of these drives are spun down even when the PC it own (they OS drive will be spun up). Most of the drives are WD Greens....they don't spin up until you try to access them...and you usually have to wait a bit to see data coming off...and when they are up, no more waiting. And only the one being access, not all of them, spin up. these drives spin down on their own when not being used. This is just a Win7 box, too, nothing special.
 
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