Mr. Bungle
Occasional Visitor
This is probably an elementary question, but I'm new to the NAS world (and even RAID in general) and just now working toward my first build.
If my FreeNAS box is idle - all 10 drives spooled down due to power saving features - and I access a single file on the system, will that cause all 10 drives to spool up? Will they also stay running for the duration of the file access?
Does that depend on the file system (ZFS in this case), RAID level, or anything else like that? Or is it just the nature of RAID or network file access?
My reason for asking this is that, in another thread, I'm working out a hardware selection for a 30TB NAS. The idea was to centralize all of my files so that I can manage them in one place, and not worry too much about the individual storage on the other 3 computers in the house.
However, since it will usually just be myself and my GF accessing the NAS, it will likely be idle for long periods of time when we're at work, eating dinner, out & about, etc. If I get home and just want to listen to some music while answering emails or something, I'll feel a bit guilty if I'm causing 10 drives to spool up just to get a few KB/s of streaming data from the NAS.
If this is true, should I consider alternative arrangements - like separate pools for music, movies, and assorted files/documents - to save some power and wear & tear on the drives? How do people usually manage this type of thing - or just not worry about it?
If my FreeNAS box is idle - all 10 drives spooled down due to power saving features - and I access a single file on the system, will that cause all 10 drives to spool up? Will they also stay running for the duration of the file access?
Does that depend on the file system (ZFS in this case), RAID level, or anything else like that? Or is it just the nature of RAID or network file access?
My reason for asking this is that, in another thread, I'm working out a hardware selection for a 30TB NAS. The idea was to centralize all of my files so that I can manage them in one place, and not worry too much about the individual storage on the other 3 computers in the house.
However, since it will usually just be myself and my GF accessing the NAS, it will likely be idle for long periods of time when we're at work, eating dinner, out & about, etc. If I get home and just want to listen to some music while answering emails or something, I'll feel a bit guilty if I'm causing 10 drives to spool up just to get a few KB/s of streaming data from the NAS.
If this is true, should I consider alternative arrangements - like separate pools for music, movies, and assorted files/documents - to save some power and wear & tear on the drives? How do people usually manage this type of thing - or just not worry about it?
