Anyone using power mgmt on their drives? Most of mine sit idle and could be spun down.. Though I wonder what impact that might have on long term reliability?
I'd spin the drives down, gotta be good. I also have a syslog tailer let me know if smartctl is logging any heating/error conditions.
My understanding (and limited experience) is that if the computer is on 24/7 it's best to have them spin all the time. The Spin Up/Spin Down process is much more wear and tear on the drives than maintaining a constant spin and will eventually lead to an earlier failure. IME - I have 4x 120GB drives that have been on as long as the machine has power for the past ~5 years. (Knock on wood), no failures yet...
<Not that I know anything>
Well what hurt drives is hot/cold, start/stop. The theory is that for servers being used 24x7, you keep the drives spinning, much like driving on the highway, to avoid the stop/start wear and tear of city driving.
My general usage pattern of the music server is about a couple hours a day, say when I'm not sleeping or out of the house. With that pattern I decided that spinning down would be the way to go - since once I start listening, the drives will remain spinning the entire time as they stream flacs off the drives. Mind you I don't think that's any sort of absolute - you'd have to decide what makes sense for you.