QNAP newbee, why USB swap?

[jasell]

Again, I'new to the QNAP, I have QNAP TS-209 II pro that runs SC 7.2.1 and SSODS 3.15.

I see there is a USB swap function under SSODS.
Why should I use that? WHat benefits will it give?

Is it intended for a USB stick? what size is needed? Should I use USB 2.0?

[RichardEvans]

When SSODS/Squeezecentre is installed on your Qnap, you will find that your hard drive wont want to spin down. It is supposed to spin down when not in use, to save power. Not a major issue for most people, but some people don't like having their hard drive spinning all the time.

The USB swap drive is a way to allow the hard drive to spin down when not in use. The idea is that with everything running from a USB memory stick, the hard drive (in theory) should not need to spin up, unless you are actually using it. From reading the posts it looks like it works after a bit of trying.

Personaly I tried it once, (when it was a seperate utility, not part of SSOTS), and found it did allow my hard drive to spin down. Then I found that my aac+ playback was no longer working. I removed the USB swap, to get my aac+ playback working again. Since then I haven't got around to trying it again.

A post I read some time ago, suggested a USB stick of at least 1Gb.

Richard.

[jasell]

Thanks for the input. I have one 4GB laying around I will try it soon.

My Qnap has been up'n'running for 4 days now. I noticed at two ocasions that the music started chopp up. Could this have anything to do with the HDD spinning down? Or is more of an issue when you want a fast response when you start accesing the SC after being in idle (i.e. when you come home from work or in the morning).

[dcote]

hi jasell!

i installed the usb-swap on a 2GB mem stick a couple of days ago on my ts409. it definitely seems to allow the disks to spin down more reliably now. i did not even move SC 7 on to the stick, just the swap file.

so with SC7 still residing firmly on disk and the swap on usb stick, i am quite happy now and SC7 seems to be working just fine (inck. apple mp4/aac).

not sure about aac+, tho, because we have no files of that type.

i also read and found that you may only be able to create a 256MB swap file, no larger. no idea why...

and yes, my SB3s sometimes need about 30 sec. to react to the remote while my four disks spin up. but i have no choppiness, music plays smoothly.

in terms of _why_ to make sure spindown works:

1. energy consumption. +/- 20W may not seem much, but over the course of two days, that is one kilowatt. multiply that by 365 days, by ~5000 ts409s all over the world: 876 MW! with the fossil fuel used to generate most of that electricity, that is equivalent to 438 tons of CO2. or, driving 10 mid-sized cars each 219.000 KM per year, year after year.

2. SATA disks are not designed with 24x7 operation in mind. in my business (IT industry) SATA disks are generally avoided in servers, because their failure rate is usually about 2-2.5x higher than SAS disks. (statistically, 1 out of 4 SATA disks will fail with a 90%+ probability in a three year period). spinning them down at night and during the day (when you are not at home) will reduce wear and tear back down to an extent more closely in line with desktop PC usage, which is generally 8x5. this is the kind of duty SATA disks are designed for, and why they are so much cheaper than SAS disks.

[RichardEvans]

Originally Posted by jasell

Thanks for the input. I have one 4GB laying around I will try it soon.

My Qnap has been up'n'running for 4 days now. I noticed at two ocasions that the music started chopp up. Could this have anything to do with the HDD spinning down? Or is more of an issue when you want a fast response when you start accesing the SC after being in idle (i.e. when you come home from work or in the morning).

I have never hadmusic chopping up due to my hard drive spinning down. I have had it caused by the load on the server, on networking probems.

I sometimes get the first problem when either transfering a lot of files, or rescanning my music library. Actually come to think of it. I had it briefly the other day, when starting toplay a wav file on 3 Squeezeboxes at once. Looks lik my TS-109 struggled a little to start them all off smoothly at the same time.

I sometimes used to get the second problem, when I had one Squeezebox connected wirelessly, as I often get wi-fi interference from my neighbours wi-fi routers.

I think I also ought to get around to trying the USB swap thing again. It should be a lot easier now that it is part of the web interface.

Richard.

[RichardEvans]

Originally Posted by dcote

hi jasell!

i installed the usb-swap on a 2GB mem stick a couple of days ago on my ts409. it definitely seems to allow the disks to spin down more reliably now. i did not even move SC 7 on to the stick, just the swap file.

so with SC7 still residing firmly on disk and the swap on usb stick, i am quite happy now and SC7 seems to be working just fine (inck. apple mp4/aac).

not sure about aac+, tho, because we have no files of that type.

I've just tried the same on mine, and aac+ worked after a while.

I tried connecting to an aac+ radio stream I often listen to.

#EXTINF:-1,107.8 Radio Jackie - The Sound of South West London
http://www.radiojackie.com:11278/
#EXTINF:-1,107.8 Radio Jackie Finesse - The Sound of South West London
http://www.radiojackie.com:5873/

Just after enabling he USB swap, it failed miserably. However at the time I had 3 Squeezeboxes sinchronised, and I still had the SSOTS web page loaded. So I thought it might be a hardware performance issue.

I closed my Web browser and switched off 2 Squeezeboxes (playing back on just one), and it worked just fine. I then switched the other 2 Squeezeboxes back on, and that worked as well as it ever has done (it's always struggled to get a good sync doing this). All 3 are now playing the Radio Jackey Finesse stream with no problems.

Perhaps it's a matter of the USB stick slowing things down slightly. Or then again it might be a matter of what memory is in actual memory, and what memory is on the USB stick. Perhaps with the web interface open some of the aac+ stuff was trying to run from the USB stick, that would obviously not work. So perhaps closing the web interface allowed all the aac+ stuff back into real memory, and so it then startted working again.

I'm doing a lot of guesswork here, but the important thing is that I can get it to work. The next question will be, whether my hard drive actually spins down, without Squeezeventer running from the USB stick.

Richard.

Edit:

One thing I have noticed. I moved Squeezecentre to a USB drive (as my hard drive still wouldn't sleep), and now I notice that there doesn't seem to be any button to back to running it from my hard drive. Unless I uninstall and reinstall. So I will just have to hope there are no problems, as I'm not keen on doing the whole install again.

My hard drive still won't sleep, but I suspect that might be because my computers are still on (as I'm using them at the moment). I seem to remember when I was using my TS-101 it used to wake up when I switched on my Laptop.

Edit2:

I think there must be a problem with my USB stick, as I found that every now and then everything just froze. That was not good.
So I ended up removing the USB stick, which did cause a problem, as I couldn't get Squeezecentre back to running from the hard drive.
In the end I decided to reinstall and at the same time upgrade to SqueezeCentre 7.2.1. There was a problem there, because the old version of Squeezcenter had not been removed, so I ended up Telneting in to remove it from my hard drive. SS 7.2.1 is now up and running though, and I've installed the IPlayer Plugin, which works very well.

I don't think I'll be trying the USB swap thing again anytime soon though, with all the problems I keep having with it, I'd rather just let my hard drive run 24/7.

[dcote]

hi richard!

i had the very same concerns, which is why i did not move SC to the USB stick, but only the swap file.

even though i am not 100% sure the spindown _always_ works, the disks are (so far) always spun down when i check *and* i expect them to be.

did you also _only_ try moving the swap file to USB?

as far as i am concerned, i probably never will move SC to a USB stick, if only because i am not sure about the longevity of cheap flash memory being written to non-stop.

[RichardEvans]

Originally Posted by dcote

hi richard!

i had the very same concerns, which is why i did not move SC to the USB stick, but only the swap file.

even though i am not 100% sure the spindown _always_ works, the disks are (so far) always spun down when i check *and* i expect them to be.

did you also _only_ try moving the swap file to USB?

as far as i am concerned, i probably never will move SC to a USB stick, if only because i am not sure about the longevity of cheap flash memory being written to non-stop.

I did try moving just the swap file, and my Hard drive wouldn't sleep.
So I tried also moving SS to the USB stick. That didn't make it sleep either.

Anyway I later after more trouble discovered that my USB stick was not visable from the Qnap Web interface. I moved it slightly and it suddenly appeard again.

So obviously something is dodgey there, and it's hard to be sure whether it is the memory stick, or the USB port on the Qnap.

Whatever the reason, I have already spent too much time on this, so for not I think I'll just let my HD keep spinning.

I now have another problem to try and fix. I've just realized that after upgrading to SS 7.2.1 I don't have any Random Song Mix. Perhaps I need a plugin, I'm just about to have a look, at Slim Devices the download page to see whether I can find out anything about this.

Richard.

EDIT:

I thought I'd have another go, by using a USB extension cable. My thinking is that not having the memory stich connected directly to the back would put less stress on the connections, so it is more likley to work. I've just ordered one from Amazon, and while I was at it, I thought I might as well also get a better quality USB memory stick. They cost sod all these days, so I ordered a high speed 2Gb USB stick. Hopefully using that + the extension cable, I'll get it to work properly, but or course I'll have to wait for a few days for it all to arrive.

[maxrob200]

I have a QNAP TS 109 Pro II with the same software versions 7.2.1 and 3.15 and it spins doen when there is no activity. Could it perhaps be different firmware on the QNAP that is causing the HD not to spin down?

[RichardEvans]

Originally Posted by maxrob200

I have a QNAP TS 109 Pro II with the same software versions 7.2.1 and 3.15 and it spins doen when there is no activity. Could it perhaps be different firmware on the QNAP that is causing the HD not to spin down?

It could be that the more recent models have more memory in them in the first place. Hence more chance for the drive to spin down.


Speaking of the USB swap utility. I have another go at getting it to work tonight, and failed miserably.

What actualy happened. I plugged in a new 2Gb USB stick. Formetted it to EXT3. Then tried to load the SSOTS Web interface, and all I got was connection refused. Same for the Slim server web interface, and my Squeezeboxes also stopped working. I Removed the USB and restarted, and all worked fine. I then tried again, and the same thing happened. As soon as I put the USB stick in, all the SSOTS and Squeezecenter stuff, stops working.

It's almost like my Qnap it trying to say something to me. I think it's saying "Don't use that USB thing, just let me HD run".

Richard.