Seagate ST3000DM001 3TB drives...chirping and clicking

Hi,

I am using a QNAP TS-659 PROII and it's fantasitc. I have five 3TB Seagate ST3000DM001-9YN1CC4B drives and they all click, spin down and spin up constantly every 20 seconds or so. Most of you would know that this is the head parking and the drive spinning down. This is called a 'load cycle' and the drives are only rated for about 300,000 of them. Some people are reporting a lot of load cycles so not only are they noising and annoying but they're also putting mechanical stress on the drives.

I have updated my QNAP to run a script when it boots and this has solved the spin down/up problem. No more clicking or chirping and it's been running for days now!!!

(see note below about drive names if you're running a different system)


Here's how you do it:

1 - download PuTTY from this link:

http://the.earth.li/~sgtatham/putty/latest/x86/putty.exe

...this allows you to log in to your QNAP to type commands.

2 - run PuTTY

3 - when it asks for a Host Name (or IP address) enter the address of your QNAP. If you don't know
what it is press the button on the front of the NAS and note its number. Mine is set to:

192.168.0.100

...now press Open.

4 - When it says: "Login as:" type in your NAS login. You generally type in "admin" or your login name if it's different.

5 - Do the same for password. Type in "admin" if you have not changed your password.

6 - Type this in and press enter:
(you can cut and paste this text from this document and when in PuTTY right-click to paste it in. Better than typing!)

mount -t ext2 /dev/sdx6 /tmp/config

7 - Type this in and press enter:

vi /tmp/config/autorun.sh

This opens a text editor called "vi"

8 - Now press "a" to add text and enter the following lines and press enter after each line:

#!/bin/sh
hdparm -B 255 /dev/sda3
hdparm -B 255 /dev/sdb3
hdparm -B 255 /dev/sdc3
hdparm -B 255 /dev/sdd3
hdparm -B 255 /dev/sde3

9 - Now press ESC to exit edit mode

10 - Now press "ZZ". These are capital ZZ so hold down shift when you do it. The text editor is now
closed and has saved a file called autorun.sh for you.

11 - Type this in and press enter:

chmod +x /tmp/config/autorun.sh

12 - Type this in and press enter:

umount /tmp/config

13 - Now close the Windows Software PuTTY.

14 - Turn off your QNAP and turn it on again.

Your drives will no longer spin down and spin up making horrible clicking noises. You will not need
to do this again as autorun.sh is exectued each time you start your NAS.

Great success!!

NOTE: Your NAS may be different from my RAID5 NAS and you may need to change the "/sda" text to
something else. To see what your QNAP is using start PuTTY again and enter the following command:

mdadm --detail /dev/md0

This will display information about your drive. At the end you'll see something like this:

Number Major Minor RaidDevice State
0 8 3 0 active sync /dev/sda3
1 8 19 1 active sync /dev/sdb3
2 8 35 2 active sync /dev/sdc3
3 8 51 3 active sync /dev/sdd3
4 8 67 4 active sync /dev/sde3

Note the /sda3 /sdb3 etc. These are the names of your disk drive. You should change your autorun.sh
to whatever your system says when editing your text file.