I'm having a major issue with my RAID 1 setup using mdadm on Proxmox with Debian 13. The hard drives won't spin down when they're mounted with read-write permissions, but they work just fine when mounted read-only. I'm looking for some guidance on what might be causing this problem. Any ideas or solutions would be greatly appreciated!
3 Answers
It sounds to me like there's some process writing to the disks that keeps them active, which is why they're not spinning down. You might want to check with 'lsof' to see if anything is holding open files on the RAID.
You might want to try a couple of tests: First, boot a Debian 13 VM outside of Proxmox to see if the issue is specific to Proxmox. If the HDDs spin down normally, then narrow your focus there. Also, consider disabling journaling for ext4 altogether. If the drives spin down when journaling is off, then it's likely a Debian issue rather than anything with ext4.
That makes sense, I'll try disabling journaling. I'm also thinking of testing the drives individually just to see if the RAID setup is causing the issue.
Spinning drives down too often can actually increase wear and tear. It's not great for HDDs, especially in a RAID setup. They're designed to stay spinning for a reason. If your drives don’t get much use, maybe just keep them running instead of worrying about spinning them down constantly.
Totally agree! I'm just trying to find a balance here; I need it for backups but don't want the drives running all the time.
I ran 'lsof' and it didn’t show any open files. Guess I’ll need to keep digging!