Power Save Mode B3

[Mirador]

Hello Developers + all folks concerned with bringing this product to life,

having solved quite a bit of my temperature problems (HDD temp 60°C; see http://forum.excito.net/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=3275&e=0) I would still like to ask if there maybe is a technical solution to this.

In order to bring temperature down I installed B3 in a way that now there is ~5mm space on top of it (it is still installed underneath a wardrobe) and a large sheet of metal where it now rests flat. Before it was just fixed to the wood on top of it. Ventilation still is bad, but temperature now is 47-49° which is kind of "normal" I guess.

Anyway - as some guys explained in my former post the reason why there is 100% HDD operation all the time is system related. I understand the reason for a stable and sustainable system, but maybe there is an easy way for you to bring down HDD access and thus temperature and also a big chunk of power consumption. My B3 is idling about 90% of the time.

In my former post somebody suggested since I am only running Squeezecenter and doing occasional file sharing I might have bought the wrong product. I don´t think so, I still like the functionality, the flexibility and the way it operates. The way your Website is styled you don´t aim the product exclusively for linux experts but also for music listeners that don´t necessarily understand the heart and soul of B3.

Anyway - I would greatly appreciate some Power Save options in B3

kind regards,

Mirador

[Nrde]

In my former post somebody suggested since I am only running Squeezecenter and doing occasional file sharing I might have bought the wrong product. I don´t think so, I still like the functionality, the flexibility and the way it operates.

In my opinion you pay premium because of the looks and its passive (read silent) cooling. You are supposed to put it somewhere visible (imo it's a waste to hide it .

Without "natural" airflow the passive cooling is not working in a optimal way. It's not easy to change the fundamental way an OS is supposed to work (Linux writing logs), but you could replace the HD with and SSD to get rid of the heat. Then put the (data) HD in an external closure and connect it with the esata port.

Also you can get almost similar products that have assisted airflow that you can place in a closet, that are probably cheaper too. Even a small itx based htpc can do what you request.

[Mirador]

I think that different users have different use cases and different intentions in displaying or hiding things.
Well, considering that even when you have the B3 well-fanned, wouldn´t it be nice to know it uses only the absolute minimum in energy?
Even if energy consumption is already quite low, 20Watts all year round is 175kWh p.a. = 35-40€
An SSD might be an alternative, but a rather expensive one.
Maybe if logging is done to a USB-Stick? Even if this is not the "professional" solution - why not?
Well - I am not knowledgeable enough to really make technical suggestions, but I think energy is an issue.

best wishes,

Mirador

[Nrde]

Even if energy consumption is already quite low, 20Watts all year round is 175kWh p.a. = 35-40€

Typical consumption for harddrive is around 6W so instead of 175kWh it's around 50. Also B3 has a "green" drive by default which might help with the power even more.

[Ubi]

My B3 totals on 12W, of which about 10W goes to the drive.
Also, don't forget that the power adapter also eats watts.

[Mirador]

Well, I didn´t measure, I was just assuming according to what it says at the plug - 12V, 3A

Anyway, in your example 83% of energy is for the drive...

Cheers,

Karsten

[Ubi]

yeah it is, the CPU really doesn't use that much. Swithing to SSD is actually cost-effective within 1.5 years or so. Only downside is the limited storage size.

[johannes]

Another reason for not spinning down is that every spin-up also wears out the drive. There has been long debates on the breaking point of that, some say that spinning up every day is worse than having it running all the time, other say every hour.

We have actually done serious attempts trying to do this as an option but is has proven difficult. Turning off logging etc isn't enough, you need to go deeper. And because of this, we have decided to recommend SSD's instead for customers wishing this.

[su_root]

Well, I didn´t measure, I was just assuming according to what it says at the plug - 12V, 3A

Anyway, in your example 83% of energy is for the drive...

Cheers,

Karsten

In another thread I got the idea to run the OS from a USB memory. Then you could safely also run B3 in laptop_mode and if _only_ files (like pictures, movies etc.) are stored on the HDD then it should be quite safe to spin down the HDD. Need a way to monitor spin up & downs for better figuring out howto exactly accomplish this practically. This is not perfectly safe for the HDD but I'm going to investigate when I get my B3 howto save more power.

One of B3's "features" are after all low power consumption and I bet that this can be further tweaked to get much lower (depending on usage of course).

edit: this could be useful, I can't post URLs yet because I'm a forum n00b but try to google:
ngflushd - A Smart Disk Spin-Down Daemon

edit2: google this "Tips to spindown your hard disk in Debian or Ubuntu" (info4adminsdotc o m )