Currently my house server is x86, linux and mostly standard Linux Mint.

It is power hungry and old and runs a 2TB SATA drive as its main data
store and a 4TB SATA drive as its backup area, and a repository for
un-backed up videos

The drives are western digital 3.5" SATA

WDC WD20EFRX-68EUZN0 (82.00A82)
WDC WD40EZRZ-00GXCB0 (80.00A80)

It probably doesnt need that much.

Totting up the partitions its only 2.6TB total. of which 1.6TB is simply
videos that dont really need backing up at all

What I would like to do is have something that boots faster after a
power cut, has far lower power consumption, and if it cant use the SATA
drives has something reasonably cheap to replace them with.

I think a 2TB + 2TB setup is more than i need, 2 + 1 more than adequate probably.

So some of the known unknowns are:
1/. How much power is used by the spinning rust, when most of the time
its idle? I find three figures quoted, active, idle and sleeping. Around
6-7W active and a couple of watts spinning
2/. How does Linux (Mint) operate disks which are seldom accessed?
3/. What is the power consumption of a typical SSD? I have seen figures
as low as 50mW idle. And a couple of watts on read /write
4/. How could I connect any disks that are not USB, to a PI?

I've looked at the current hardware and its basically

Intel® Core™2 Duo CPU E6850 @ 3.00GHz × 2 - about 75W!!!
GeForce 210/PCIe/SSE2 which is another 25W or so, so it looks like that
combo is dominating the power draw stakes.

Currently UK electricity is around £0.35p a kWh, so an annual
consumption is roughly £3 per watt per year.

Saving 100W would net me £300 a year electricity savings (well almost -
the server is a great room heater in winter)

Disk speed is essential to have except for booting. As I mentioned
fscking a big server after a power cut is a long process. I'd probably
boot off an SD card and mount something else for everything that moves
so to speak. So USB interfaces to the SATA drives would probably work.

CPU power is not an issue. I could probably do this with a Pi
Zero+Ethernet or an early Pi with onboard. I only have a 100Mbps
switch, so networks speeds are not massively needed to be high.

I am guessing that for spinning rust drives, a powered USB hub plus USB
to SATA cables would work?

And might be enough to power a Pi as well?

I am not au fait with powered hubs, and what powers what in the case of
usb ports that are connected together both with power.

Having looked at the actual power figures I am leaning towards - as a
first step, t any rate - simply trying to use the disks but dump the motherboard and graphics board and the PC case - or at least use them
for something else on a more occasional basis.

Conceptually that would mean a powered hub, two USB to SATA cables, and
an Ethernet equipped PI with at least 2GB RAM - it is nice to sometimes
run a GUI on the server, though if I dumped that probably 512M would be
enough. It looks like a zero with an ethernet + 3USB hat would do the
job cheapest...

What have I misunderstood/forgotten?

--
It is the folly of too many to mistake the echo of a London coffee-house
for the voice of the kingdom.

Jonathan Swift

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The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:

Currently my house server is x86, linux and mostly standard Linux Mint.

It is power hungry and old and runs a 2TB SATA drive as its main data
store and a 4TB SATA drive as its backup area, and a repository for
un-backed up videos

...

So some of the known unknowns are:
1/. How much power is used by the spinning rust, when most of the time
its idle? I find three figures quoted, active, idle and sleeping. Around
6-7W active and a couple of watts spinning

For some data points, I have a couple of HP Gen7 microservers. I think they take sub 20W on their own.

Box A (N54L) has 6x 3.5" HDD, an HP RAID card and a USB 3 card. Takes ~100W idle.

Box B (N36L) has 4x 3.5" HDD, a DVD burner and no PCIe cards. Takes ~40W
idle

So looking at box B we might budget about 5W per drive. I'm not sure where
the watts go: in one of them (don't remember which) there's an 80Plus bronze Seasonic PSU, but maybe the HP PSU in the other one isn't so good.

2/. How does Linux (Mint) operate disks which are seldom accessed?

Depends on the FS, but it shouldn't use them if not accessed. One thing to watch is for software that does background indexing to make file searching faster - one such is 'xapian'. I never use desktop search (just 'find' and 'grep') so I turn this off.

3/. What is the power consumption of a typical SSD? I have seen figures
as low as 50mW idle. And a couple of watts on read /write

Sounds plausible. If it's idle it's doing nothing really.

4/. How could I connect any disks that are not USB, to a PI?

Either a USB-SATA adapter. Or PCIe - the Pi 5's PCIe lane looks promising
for a future PCIe SATA HAT. Going direct to SATA from PCIe is more robust
than going through $5 Chinese USB-SATA adapters.

Disk speed is essential to have except for booting. As I mentioned
fscking a big server after a power cut is a long process. I'd probably
boot off an SD card and mount something else for everything that moves
so to speak. So USB interfaces to the SATA drives would probably work.

On the Pi 5 each USB port has dedicated bandwidth, whereas on the Pi 4 they
are shared. HDD won't saturate a USB3 port, but SSD will.

I am guessing that for spinning rust drives, a powered USB hub plus USB
to SATA cables would work?

Yes.

And might be enough to power a Pi as well?

If the PSU is big enough, don't see why not. Although the hub may limit the output power on a given port.

I am not au fait with powered hubs, and what powers what in the case of
usb ports that are connected together both with power.

Depends on what the Pi does for power routing, I'm not sure about current versions.

Having looked at the actual power figures I am leaning towards - as a
first step, t any rate - simply trying to use the disks but dump the motherboard and graphics board and the PC case - or at least use them
for something else on a more occasional basis.

Have you considered just getting a big SSD? A 4TB Crucial P3 M.2 NVMe is £150, a Samsung 870 QVO SATA is £168: https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/products/internal-hard-drive/#A=3200000000000,22000000000000&sort=price&t=0

Or similar for multiple smaller drives.

Then use a SATA to USB or NVMe to USB dongle. Or a CM4 or Pi 5 with an M.2 HAT.

Conceptually that would mean a powered hub, two USB to SATA cables, and
an Ethernet equipped PI with at least 2GB RAM - it is nice to sometimes
run a GUI on the server, though if I dumped that probably 512M would be enough. It looks like a zero with an ethernet + 3USB hat would do the
job cheapest...

You can't fit USB 3 to a Pi Zero, so you'd be limited to <60Mbytes/s on the single USB 2, and that would be shared with the ethernet too. Pi 4, CM4 or
Pi 5 are the only sensible platforms if you want decent bandwidth.

What have I misunderstood/forgotten?

I think the Pi 5 is looking as an excellent platform for this sort of thing
- they've finally ironed out the I/O quirks of the earlier models, and PCIe
is attractive. The PCIe HAT ecosystem hasn't developed yet, so I might be tempted to postpone this for a few months and see what happens - or think of
a stopgap solution.

Theo
(who is thinking of replacing the Microserver motherboard with a Pi 5 + SATA HAT when such appear)

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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Andy Burns <usenet@andyburns.uk> wrote:

Theo wrote:

I think the Pi 5 is looking as an excellent platform for this sort of
thing - they've finally ironed out the I/O quirks of the earlier models, and PCIe is attractive. The PCIe HAT ecosystem hasn't developed yet, so
I might be tempted to postpone this for a few months and see what
happens - or think of a stopgap solution.

Biggish USB3 SATA drive(s) for now, later get an M.2 hat for faster NVMe
boot drive?

I think it's a good plan for a NAS to separate the boot drive from the data drives. So whether you do that with an SD card or an SSD is up to you,
depends on what you're going to use it for.

You could use a USB SSD for boot drive, and then an M.2 for a data drive, as another possibility.

Theo

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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Theo wrote:

I think the Pi 5 is looking as an excellent platform for this sort of
thing - they've finally ironed out the I/O quirks of the earlier models,
and PCIe is attractive. The PCIe HAT ecosystem hasn't developed yet, so
I might be tempted to postpone this for a few months and see what
happens - or think of a stopgap solution.

Biggish USB3 SATA drive(s) for now, later get an M.2 hat for faster NVMe
boot drive?

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)

The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:

On 29/09/2023 12:19, Theo wrote:

You can't fit USB 3 to a Pi Zero, so you'd be limited to <60Mbytes/s

on the

single USB 2, and that would be shared with the ethernet too.

The question is, is that actually more than good enough anyway?

In most use cases I will be backing up from the Internet at 5MByte/s
max, or serving data over 100Mbps (12.5MByte/sec) Ethernet, so at first glance it looks like its not a serious issue, although the sharing of
the same bus between ethernet and disk does raise some question marks .

I.e can a USB2 bus support reading off a disk and pumping out to a
network simultaneously at 100Mbps?

I can't comment on the simultaneously question - I'm sure there's info about that out there - but what would irritate me is that disk speed *inside* the
box would also be slow. eg if you wanted to copy something from disc 1 to
disc 2, that's subject to the USB2 bottleneck (~25Mbytes a sec after USB overhead and because you have to transfer the data over USB twice). If
you're searching files, you need to pull them all over USB 2. And so on.

Once you start going multi-TB, at these speeds jobs start stacking up into
the hours or days, and that gets irritating.

I have discovered that there exist *powered* usb to SATA *cables* that
run off 12V and those would work OK . I could hack them to run off an
old PC case+PSU I have that would also be a decent cradle for the SATA drives.

The problem is a PI 4 or 5 costs more than a Zero, plus ethernet/USB
HAT and yet still cannot power a 3.5" spinning rust drive over its USB.

You didn't mention cost concerns, beyond being saving your electricity bill.
Up to you, but any Pi is going to buy you a big saving in electricity every year. How much price/performance you want at this point is your choice.
But the delta to get much better performance is not huge.

No 3.5" USB HDD is powered from its USB, since they need 12V. They all have external PSUs. A 2.5" HDD can run from 5V USB bus power, but not 3.5".

As far as SSDs are concerned, *once booted* I don't have any speed
issues with my existing rust. They remain a 'nice to have one day' option

Your existing rust is likely on 6Gbps SATA3, and you're proposing going to something 12-25x slower (although the HDD likely can't saturate SATA3 for
long periods so it's not quite so bad). Your decision whether that matters
to you.

Theo

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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On 29/09/2023 12:19, Theo wrote:

The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:

Currently my house server is x86, linux and mostly standard Linux Mint.

It is power hungry and old and runs a 2TB SATA drive as its main data
store and a 4TB SATA drive as its backup area, and a repository for
un-backed up videos

...

So some of the known unknowns are:
1/. How much power is used by the spinning rust, when most of the time
its idle? I find three figures quoted, active, idle and sleeping. Around
6-7W active and a couple of watts spinning

For some data points, I have a couple of HP Gen7 microservers. I think they take sub 20W on their own.

Box A (N54L) has 6x 3.5" HDD, an HP RAID card and a USB 3 card. Takes ~100W idle.

Box B (N36L) has 4x 3.5" HDD, a DVD burner and no PCIe cards. Takes ~40W idle

So looking at box B we might budget about 5W per drive. I'm not sure where the watts go: in one of them (don't remember which) there's an 80Plus bronze Seasonic PSU, but maybe the HP PSU in the other one isn't so good.

2/. How does Linux (Mint) operate disks which are seldom accessed?

Depends on the FS, but it shouldn't use them if not accessed. One thing to watch is for software that does background indexing to make file searching faster - one such is 'xapian'. I never use desktop search (just 'find' and 'grep') so I turn this off.

3/. What is the power consumption of a typical SSD? I have seen figures
as low as 50mW idle. And a couple of watts on read /write

Sounds plausible. If it's idle it's doing nothing really.

4/. How could I connect any disks that are not USB, to a PI?

Either a USB-SATA adapter. Or PCIe - the Pi 5's PCIe lane looks promising for a future PCIe SATA HAT. Going direct to SATA from PCIe is more robust than going through $5 Chinese USB-SATA adapters.

Disk speed is essential to have except for booting. As I mentioned
fscking a big server after a power cut is a long process. I'd probably
boot off an SD card and mount something else for everything that moves
so to speak. So USB interfaces to the SATA drives would probably work.

On the Pi 5 each USB port has dedicated bandwidth, whereas on the Pi 4 they are shared. HDD won't saturate a USB3 port, but SSD will.

I am guessing that for spinning rust drives, a powered USB hub plus USB
to SATA cables would work?

Yes.

And might be enough to power a Pi as well?

If the PSU is big enough, don't see why not. Although the hub may limit the output power on a given port.

I am not au fait with powered hubs, and what powers what in the case of
usb ports that are connected together both with power.

Depends on what the Pi does for power routing, I'm not sure about current versions.

Having looked at the actual power figures I am leaning towards - as a
first step, t any rate - simply trying to use the disks but dump the
motherboard and graphics board and the PC case - or at least use them
for something else on a more occasional basis.

Have you considered just getting a big SSD? A 4TB Crucial P3 M.2 NVMe is £150, a Samsung 870 QVO SATA is £168: https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/products/internal-hard-drive/#A=3200000000000,22000000000000&sort=price&t=0

Or similar for multiple smaller drives.

Then use a SATA to USB or NVMe to USB dongle. Or a CM4 or Pi 5 with an M.2 HAT.

Conceptually that would mean a powered hub, two USB to SATA cables, and
an Ethernet equipped PI with at least 2GB RAM - it is nice to sometimes
run a GUI on the server, though if I dumped that probably 512M would be
enough. It looks like a zero with an ethernet + 3USB hat would do the
job cheapest...

You can't fit USB 3 to a Pi Zero, so you'd be limited to <60Mbytes/s on the single USB 2, and that would be shared with the ethernet too. Pi 4, CM4 or Pi 5 are the only sensible platforms if you want decent bandwidth.

What have I misunderstood/forgotten?

I think the Pi 5 is looking as an excellent platform for this sort of thing
- they've finally ironed out the I/O quirks of the earlier models, and PCIe is attractive. The PCIe HAT ecosystem hasn't developed yet, so I might be tempted to postpone this for a few months and see what happens - or think of a stopgap solution.

Theo
(who is thinking of replacing the Microserver motherboard with a Pi 5 + SATA HAT when such appear)

Ah Theo, excellent and well appreciated comments. I dont need speed.
But looking at a Pi Zero +ethernet hat +USB extenders, you make the
point that it all goes over the one USB connector and not a fast one at
that.

You can't fit USB 3 to a Pi Zero, so you'd be limited to <60Mbytes/s

on the

single USB 2, and that would be shared with the ethernet too.

The question is, is that actually more than good enough anyway?

In most use cases I will be backing up from the Internet at 5MByte/s
max, or serving data over 100Mbps (12.5MByte/sec) Ethernet, so at first
glance it looks like its not a serious issue, although the sharing of
the same bus between ethernet and disk does raise some question marks .

I.e can a USB2 bus support reading off a disk and pumping out to a
network simultaneously at 100Mbps?

I have discovered that there exist *powered* usb to SATA *cables* that
run off 12V and those would work OK . I could hack them to run off an
old PC case+PSU I have that would also be a decent cradle for the SATA
drives.

The problem is a PI 4 or 5 costs more than a Zero, plus ethernet/USB
HAT and yet still cannot power a 3.5" spinning rust drive over its USB.

I get would CPU memory and bus speed that I may actually not need...My
current RAM usage WITH Mate and X-Windows is only 650Mbyte. If I went
headless I doubt that it would be much greater than my ZERO W at 55MBytes

As far as SSDs are concerned, *once booted* I don't have any speed
issues with my existing rust. They remain a 'nice to have one day' option



--
“Some people like to travel by train because it combines the slowness of
a car with the cramped public exposure of 
an airplane.”

Dennis Miller

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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On 29/09/2023 14:10, Theo wrote:

The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:

On 29/09/2023 12:19, Theo wrote:

>You can't fit USB 3 to a Pi Zero, so you'd be limited to <60Mbytes/s
on the
> single USB 2, and that would be shared with the ethernet too.

The question is, is that actually more than good enough anyway?

In most use cases I will be backing up from the Internet at 5MByte/s
max, or serving data over 100Mbps (12.5MByte/sec) Ethernet, so at first
glance it looks like its not a serious issue, although the sharing of
the same bus between ethernet and disk does raise some question marks .

I.e can a USB2 bus support reading off a disk and pumping out to a
network simultaneously at 100Mbps?

I can't comment on the simultaneously question - I'm sure there's info about that out there - but what would irritate me is that disk speed *inside* the box would also be slow. eg if you wanted to copy something from disc 1 to disc 2, that's subject to the USB2 bottleneck (~25Mbytes a sec after USB overhead and because you have to transfer the data over USB twice). If you're searching files, you need to pull them all over USB 2. And so on.

Ah, right. Yes that's a case I didn't cover. In my application, which
has evolved over the years, that is simply a rsync backup - one disk is
simply there in case the main disk suffers hardware failure and is based
on bad experiences from running servers over the years - that disks
used a lot fail. Especially if subjected to flaky power and disks used
less dont.

The cost of a second disk that only gets activity once a night during
backup is a lot less than a UPS and is the only thing that will protect
against a drive that dies from old age to the point of unreadability.

It doesn't have to be fast

E.g although I back up TERABYTES, typically backing up the changes only
takes less than two minutes

Once you start going multi-TB, at these speeds jobs start stacking up into the hours or days, and that gets irritating.

Well yes, to fully restore a backup drive when the last one failed took
about 5 hours

But that is a very rare event

I have discovered that there exist *powered* usb to SATA *cables* that
run off 12V and those would work OK . I could hack them to run off an
old PC case+PSU I have that would also be a decent cradle for the SATA
drives.

The problem is a PI 4 or 5 costs more than a Zero, plus ethernet/USB
HAT and yet still cannot power a 3.5" spinning rust drive over its USB.

You didn't mention cost concerns, beyond being saving your electricity bill. Up to you, but any Pi is going to buy you a big saving in electricity every year. How much price/performance you want at this point is your choice.
But the delta to get much better performance is not huge.

I fully agree with THAT, but the point really is what is the point of performance I never use?

My desktops need the power far far more than the server. They are my
compile engines and where I process video files etc etc.
You don't buy a Ferrari *just* to go to the supermarket...

No 3.5" USB HDD is powered from its USB, since they need 12V. They all have external PSUs. A 2.5" HDD can run from 5V USB bus power, but not 3.5".

Ah, ok . Hence the 'powered adapter' . It all begins to make sense.

As far as SSDs are concerned, *once booted* I don't have any speed
issues with my existing rust. They remain a 'nice to have one day' option

Your existing rust is likely on 6Gbps SATA3, and you're proposing going to something 12-25x slower (although the HDD likely can't saturate SATA3 for long periods so it's not quite so bad). Your decision whether that matters to you.

I think they are in fact 3GBps SATA 3 - I cant remember which mobo is in
there - I think I got given that mobo and case for nothing as it was a
trade in on an early winXP machine :-) - but all the boads I have saved
data on are 3GBPs SATA 3

It's cost me more in electricity than it ever did to buy

But the disks are:
"Maximum interface speed 600 MB/s
Maximum buffered read speed 428 MB/s
Maximum read speed 197 MB/s"

Is that bytes/second or bits/second?

Which again shows the pointlessness of high speed connections to
bottlenecks :-)

Although I DO take the point that if that is the raw disk speed going
down to a 64MB/s shared USB2 bus is pretty crap

Well nothing short of a Pi 4B has USB3 does it?

Hence why you think it would suit.

Out of stock at my usual vendor, but price is not so bad

Could double as a wifi access point, too. :-)

Hmm. On balance that is so little more than a zero with hat its probably
worth it

If I can get a 1GB model cheap

Thanks for the thoughts

Theo

--
"An intellectual is a person knowledgeable in one field who speaks out
only in others...”

Tom Wolfe

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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On 29/09/2023 14:10, Theo wrote:

No 3.5" USB HDD is powered from its USB, since they need 12V. They all have external PSUs. A 2.5" HDD can run from 5V USB bus power, but not 3.5".

2.5" HDDs - not always true.
I had a 4Gb Seagate the ran fine from USB on a Pi3B. When I changed to a
5Tb WD, I had to add in external power (via a Y-cable).


--
Chris Elvidge, England
I WILL REMEMBER TO TAKE MY MEDICATION

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)

On 29/09/2023 17:01, Chris Elvidge wrote:

On 29/09/2023 14:10, Theo wrote:

No 3.5" USB HDD is powered from its USB, since they need 12V.  They
all have
external PSUs.  A 2.5" HDD can run from 5V USB bus power, but not 3.5".

2.5" HDDs - not always true.
I had a 4Gb Seagate the ran fine from USB on a Pi3B. When I changed to a
5Tb WD, I had to add in external power (via a Y-cable).

I feel that the Pis power supply limits to its peripherals are one of
its most poor features.
One feels one ought to be able to bang a 50W psu on a pi and not have issues

--
The lifetime of any political organisation is about three years before
its been subverted by the people it tried to warn you about.

Anon.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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On Fri, 29 Sep 2023 17:01:31 +0100
Chris Elvidge <chris@mshome.net> wrote:

On 29/09/2023 14:10, Theo wrote:

No 3.5" USB HDD is powered from its USB, since they need 12V. They all have external PSUs. A 2.5" HDD can run from 5V USB bus power, but not 3.5".

2.5" HDDs - not always true.

Especially if you use one of the 15Krpm screamers made for high performance storage arrays just before NVMe SSDs took over.

--
Steve O'Hara-Smith
Odds and Ends at http://www.sohara.org/
Host: Beautiful Theory meet Inconvenient Fact
Obit: Beautiful Theory died today of factual inconsistency

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)

Chris Elvidge <chris@mshome.net> wrote:

On 29/09/2023 14:10, Theo wrote:

No 3.5" USB HDD is powered from its USB, since they need 12V. They all have external PSUs. A 2.5" HDD can run from 5V USB bus power, but not 3.5".

2.5" HDDs - not always true.
I had a 4Gb Seagate the ran fine from USB on a Pi3B. When I changed to a
5Tb WD, I had to add in external power (via a Y-cable).

It *can*, but not all USB ports have enough bus power. In that case you
need a powered hub to provide more bus power.

Point being a 3.5" *can't*, because they use 12V power and USB hubs don't provide that (maybe a USB-C PD hub could, but I doubt any HDD are built that way).

Theo

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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On 29/09/2023 11:45, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

Currently my house server is x86, linux and mostly standard Linux Mint.

It is power hungry and old and runs a 2TB SATA drive as its main data
store and a 4TB SATA drive as its backup area, and a repository for
un-backed up videos

I am not au fait with powered hubs, and what powers what in the case of
usb ports that are connected together both with power.

Beware if you use a powered hub. My Pi 4 refuses to boot (it hangs
before even displaying anything on screen) if I have a powered USB hub
and HDD connected to it, and the Pi, hub and HDD are powered on
simultaneously (eg when power is restored after a power cut). If the hub
and HDD are powered on first, and the Pi 4 a couple of seconds later, everything is fine. My older Pi 3 did not have this problem.

I had to change to a powered USB/SATA caddy and a SATA drive, rather
than a powered USB hub and a USB HDD.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)

On 29/09/2023 20:56, NY wrote:

On 29/09/2023 11:45, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

Currently my house server is x86, linux and mostly standard Linux Mint.

It is power hungry and old and runs a 2TB SATA drive as its main data
store and a 4TB SATA drive as its backup area, and a repository for
un-backed up videos

I am not au fait with powered hubs, and what powers what in the case
of usb ports that are connected together both with power.

Beware if you use a powered hub. My Pi 4 refuses to boot (it hangs
before even displaying anything on screen) if I have a powered USB hub
and HDD connected to it, and the Pi, hub and HDD are powered on simultaneously (eg when power is restored after a power cut). If the hub
and HDD are powered on first, and the Pi 4 a couple of seconds later, everything is fine. My older Pi 3 did not have this problem.

I had to change to a powered USB/SATA caddy and a SATA drive, rather
than a powered USB hub and a USB HDD.

Someone suggested that the Pi 4 didn't like the +5V line of one of its
USB ports being powered by an external source, if the hub feeds power *upstream* to the Pi as well as downstream to the HDD. But that doesn't
explain the exact opposite which is what I see: the hub *not* being
powered at boot time. I did try making up a special USB cable with its
+5V line cut, but that did not help.

It was definitely an interaction with the hub, because if I plugged the
USB HDD directly into the Pi (*), or if I didn't plug the HDD in at all,
with an auto-mount command in /etc/fstab in both cases, it worked fine.
I suspect it was a hardware problem, long before Unix tried to mount the
drive.


(*) Don't do that as a long-term solution: the Pi runs *very* hot if you
try to power a spinning HDD from its USB ports. I found that out...

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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On 29/09/2023 11:45, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

Currently my house server is x86, linux and mostly standard Linux Mint.

It is power hungry and old and runs a 2TB SATA drive as its main data
store and a 4TB SATA drive as its backup area, and a repository for
un-backed up videos

The drives are western digital 3.5" SATA

WDC WD20EFRX-68EUZN0 (82.00A82)
WDC WD40EZRZ-00GXCB0 (80.00A80)

It probably doesnt need that much.

Totting up the partitions its only 2.6TB total. of which 1.6TB is simply videos that dont really need backing up at all

What I would like to do is have something that boots faster after a
power cut,  has far lower power consumption, and if it cant use the SATA drives has something reasonably cheap to replace them with.

I think a 2TB + 2TB setup is more than i need, 2 + 1 more than adequate probably.

So some of the known unknowns are:
1/. How much power is used by the spinning rust, when most of the time
its idle? I find three figures quoted, active, idle and sleeping. Around
6-7W active and a couple of watts spinning

They require a lot of power to spin up. That pretty much dictates they
cannot be powered from the rPi USB, even a 2.5" hdd requires a
separately powered USB to SATA connector.

2/. How does Linux (Mint) operate disks which are seldom accessed?

I assume it spins them down. I've been abusing a laptop 2.5" hdd for
years, mainly used to write rsnapshot backups.

3/. What is the power consumption of a typical SSD? I have seen figures
as low as 50mW idle. And a couple of watts on read /write

It's low enough, not to matter.

4/. How could I connect any disks that are not USB, to a PI?

AIUI spinning rust does not use a huge amount of power normally, when
spinning, but does require a lot of power to spin up. There was some
discussion of an SSD and HDD being equivalent power for constant access,
I'm not sure if I believe that, but whatever it is only a few watts.
SSDs are clearly more power efficient for occasional access.

I have used a rpi4 as a NAS since a couple of weeks after it was
released. It is surprisingly unproblematic. I use SAMBA. I did remote
desk benchmarking, showing I was getting 80 or 90% of the 1Gb/s network
speed.

I've used various USB2SATA cables. Unpowered for only SSD, powered for HDD.

Currently, I'm using this:

<https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B0B217QRWJ>

Supposedly handles 3.5" hdd (although I use 1 ssd + 1 2.5 hdd)

In the past I used
<https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B01EQ7PNZY> <https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B01N2JIQR7>

I've looked at the current  hardware and its basically

Intel® Core™2 Duo CPU E6850 @ 3.00GHz × 2 - about 75W!!!
GeForce 210/PCIe/SSE2 which is another 25W or so, so it looks like that
combo is dominating the power draw stakes.

Currently UK electricity is around £0.35p a kWh, so an annual
consumption is roughly £3 per watt per year.

Saving 100W would net me £300 a year electricity savings (well almost -
the server is a great room heater in winter)

Disk speed is essential to have except for booting. As I mentioned
fscking a big server after a power cut is a long  process. I'd probably
boot off an SD card and  mount something else for everything that moves
so to speak. So USB interfaces to the SATA drives would probably work.

My rPi4 does boot slowly, off SD, but I have 5 docker containers running
on it as well as the NAS, including CCTV.

CPU power is not an issue. I could probably do this with a Pi
Zero+Ethernet  or an early Pi with onboard.  I only have a 100Mbps
switch, so networks speeds are not massively needed to be high.

100Mb/s is slow for disk access. 1Gb/s switches are dirt cheap, and a
modern one will also be lower power.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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On 29/09/2023 22:21, Jim Jackson wrote:

On 2023-09-29, NY <me@privacy.net> wrote:

It was definitely an interaction with the hub, because if I plugged the
USB HDD directly into the Pi (*), or if I didn't plug the HDD in at all,
with an auto-mount command in /etc/fstab in both cases, it worked fine.
I suspect it was a hardware problem, long before Unix tried to mount the
drive.


(*) Don't do that as a long-term solution: the Pi runs *very* hot if you
try to power a spinning HDD from its USB ports. I found that out...

Does 3 years and counting of 24/7 mean I've killed my Pi :-)
My Pi powers a USB connected 2.5 spinning disk just fine.

Is your Pi in a case? Mine is, in a case without a CPU fan, which will
limit the cooling from the heatsink a bit. I stopped powering the HDD
from the Pi when I smelled hot plastic case... Admittedly the Pi and the
disk are kept in a cupboard of a cabinet on which the TV stands, so the enclosed space in the cabinet gets a little bit warm.

With the HDD powered by a USB/SATA caddy adjacent to the Pi in its case,
the Pi's CPU runs at about 60 deg C. Not sure what it got up to when the
HDD was powered by the Pi.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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On 2023-09-29, NY <me@privacy.net> wrote:

It was definitely an interaction with the hub, because if I plugged the
USB HDD directly into the Pi (*), or if I didn't plug the HDD in at all,
with an auto-mount command in /etc/fstab in both cases, it worked fine.
I suspect it was a hardware problem, long before Unix tried to mount the drive.

(*) Don't do that as a long-term solution: the Pi runs *very* hot if you
try to power a spinning HDD from its USB ports. I found that out...

Does 3 years and counting of 24/7 mean I've killed my Pi :-)
My Pi powers a USB connected 2.5 spinning disk just fine.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)

The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:

Currently my house server is x86, linux and mostly standard Linux Mint.

It is power hungry and old and runs a 2TB SATA drive as its main data
store and a 4TB SATA drive as its backup area, and a repository for
un-backed up videos

I have/had something similar. However the computer I use is a Fujitsu
Esprimo P9xx which consumes only around 15 watts when idle. If you
shop around and look at the 'Energy Star' listings you can find even
lower power 'desktop' machines nowadays. Some of the newer Fujitsu
machines use less than 10 watts and yet have all the things you want
like NVME disk drive ability, SATA, etc. You also get a box to put it
all in! :-)

I currently have an external 8Tb USB3 drive which powers down when
idle.

I have several Raspberry Pis but I don't think they make particularly
good NAS/Backup machines.

...oh, almost forgot, you can get refurbished Fujitsu Esprimos (lots
of different models) quite cheaply.

--
Chris Green
·

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On 29/09/2023 20:56, NY wrote:

On 29/09/2023 11:45, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

Currently my house server is x86, linux and mostly standard Linux Mint.

It is power hungry and old and runs a 2TB SATA drive as its main data
store and a 4TB SATA drive as its backup area, and a repository for
un-backed up videos

I am not au fait with powered hubs, and what powers what in the case
of usb ports that are connected together both with power.

Beware if you use a powered hub. My Pi 4 refuses to boot (it hangs
before even displaying anything on screen) if I have a powered USB hub
and HDD connected to it, and the Pi, hub and HDD are powered on simultaneously (eg when power is restored after a power cut). If the hub
and HDD are powered on first, and the Pi 4 a couple of seconds later, everything is fine. My older Pi 3 did not have this problem.

I had to change to a powered USB/SATA caddy and a SATA drive, rather
than a powered USB hub and a USB HDD.

Yeah. In my case further acquisition of Knowledge™ has made the question redundant. You can't apparently run (bare) 3.5inch drives off *just*
USB because they need 12V.

There exist USB to SATA cables that take a 12V power source. And that
looks to be a simpler solution.


--
Microsoft : the best reason to go to Linux that ever existed.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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On 29/09/2023 22:11, Pancho wrote:

On 29/09/2023 11:45, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

..

2/. How does Linux (Mint) operate disks which are seldom accessed?

I assume it spins them down. I've been abusing a laptop 2.5"  hdd for
years, mainly used to write rsnapshot backups.

3/. What is the power consumption of a typical SSD? I have seen
figures as low as 50mW idle. And a couple of watts on read /write

It's low enough, not to matter.

4/. How could I connect any disks that are not USB, to a PI?

AIUI spinning rust does not use a huge amount of power normally, when spinning, but does require a lot of power to spin up. There was some discussion of an SSD and HDD being equivalent power for constant access,
I'm not sure if I believe that, but whatever it is only a few watts.
SSDs are clearly more power efficient for occasional access.

I have used a rpi4 as a NAS since a couple of weeks after it was
released. It is surprisingly unproblematic. I use SAMBA. I did remote
desk benchmarking, showing I was getting 80 or 90% of the 1Gb/s network speed.

I've used various USB2SATA cables. Unpowered for only SSD, powered for HDD.

Currently, I'm using this:

<https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B0B217QRWJ>

Supposedly handles 3.5" hdd (although I use  1 ssd + 1 2.5 hdd)

In the past I used
<https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B01EQ7PNZY> <https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B01N2JIQR7>

Ah, that caddy looks neat.
..

My rPi4 does boot slowly, off SD, but I have 5 docker containers running
on it as well as the NAS, including CCTV.

CPU power is not an issue. I could probably do this with a Pi
Zero+Ethernet  or an early Pi with onboard.  I only have a 100Mbps
switch, so networks speeds are not massively needed to be high.

100Mb/s is slow for disk access. 1Gb/s switches are dirt cheap, and a
modern one will also be lower power.

Not a 1U rack mounted 16 port one. And not sure the house wiring is up
to it!
It is on my list of 'nice to haves' if i can come up with a decent cheap one

But its not a crashing essential - i can play HD videos OK over the
network and that's the fastest transfers I normally do...



--
"First, find out who are the people you can not criticise. They are your oppressors."
- George Orwell

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)

On 29/09/2023 22:21, Jim Jackson wrote:

On 2023-09-29, NY <me@privacy.net> wrote:

It was definitely an interaction with the hub, because if I plugged the
USB HDD directly into the Pi (*), or if I didn't plug the HDD in at all,
with an auto-mount command in /etc/fstab in both cases, it worked fine.
I suspect it was a hardware problem, long before Unix tried to mount the
drive.


(*) Don't do that as a long-term solution: the Pi runs *very* hot if you
try to power a spinning HDD from its USB ports. I found that out...

Does 3 years and counting of 24/7 mean I've killed my Pi :-)
My Pi powers a USB connected 2.5 spinning disk just fine.

I think the answer would be 'it depends on the drive and if linux is
configured to spin down on idle' .
You are in effect powering an electric motor and the more friction there
is and the more rpms you want it to do. in general, the more power it
will need

--
“But what a weak barrier is truth when it stands in the way of an hypothesis!”

Mary Wollstonecraft

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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On 30/09/2023 09:50, Chris Green wrote:

The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:

Currently my house server is x86, linux and mostly standard Linux Mint.

It is power hungry and old and runs a 2TB SATA drive as its main data
store and a 4TB SATA drive as its backup area, and a repository for
un-backed up videos

I have/had something similar. However the computer I use is a Fujitsu
Esprimo P9xx which consumes only around 15 watts when idle. If you
shop around and look at the 'Energy Star' listings you can find even
lower power 'desktop' machines nowadays. Some of the newer Fujitsu
machines use less than 10 watts and yet have all the things you want
like NVME disk drive ability, SATA, etc. You also get a box to put it
all in! :-)

I currently have an external 8Tb USB3 drive which powers down when
idle.

I have several Raspberry Pis but I don't think they make particularly
good NAS/Backup machines.

...oh, almost forgot, you can get refurbished Fujitsu Esprimos (lots
of different models) quite cheaply.

That is an interesting thought. My newest desktop is an HP EliteDesk
running a core i5 and is rated at 37W. It for sure runs cooler than what
it replaced

The problem with the Esprimo is that it isn't in a case that will take
two 3.5"hdd
That rather why a Pi is preferred - I can maybe get an empty rack mount
case and fit everything in it.

But it is food for thought.



--
“A leader is best When people barely know he exists. Of a good leader,
who talks little,When his work is done, his aim fulfilled,They will say,
“We did this ourselves.”

― Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:

Not a 1U rack mounted 16 port one. And not sure the house wiring is up
to it!
It is on my list of 'nice to haves' if i can come up with a decent cheap one

On power consumption terms that switch must be hungry too. If it has a fan
it must be taking a good few watts.

I like the TP-Link Easy Smart range because you get extra features like port mirroring and VLAN tagging. Going rate for a 16 port one on ebay about 30-60 quid, eg with PoE:
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/155801541673?
and that takes max 8W plus whatever PoE loads you have.

If you've only wire 2 pairs per socket that will prevent doing gigabit
though.

Theo

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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On 30/09/2023 13:16, Theo wrote:

The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:

Not a 1U rack mounted 16 port one. And not sure the house wiring is up
to it!
It is on my list of 'nice to haves' if i can come up with a decent cheap one

On power consumption terms that switch must be hungry too. If it has a fan it must be taking a good few watts.

I like the TP-Link Easy Smart range because you get extra features like port mirroring and VLAN tagging. Going rate for a 16 port one on ebay about 30-60 quid, eg with PoE:
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/155801541673?
and that takes max 8W plus whatever PoE loads you have.

If you've only wire 2 pairs per socket that will prevent doing gigabit though.

Theo

Oh no, me mate and I wired the whole house to full CAT5/structured
cabling standards . BUT that isn't necessarily good enough for gigabit.
Cable might have too much attenuation.

--
"Anyone who believes that the laws of physics are mere social
conventions is invited to try transgressing those conventions from the
windows of my apartment. (I live on the twenty-first floor.) "

Alan Sokal

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:

Oh no, me mate and I wired the whole house to full CAT5/structured
cabling standards . BUT that isn't necessarily good enough for gigabit.
Cable might have too much attenuation.

Many domestic installations don't get anywhere near the 305m that's the max
in the ethernet spec. So you can get away with out of spec cabling because
the spec expects the attenuation from 305m but you only have 30m.

Try it and see? Patch a couple of ports together (without using a switch),
put a machine at each end and see if a gigabit link will come up and stably pass traffic. You might be surprised.

Theo

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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Theo <theom+news@chiark.greenend.org.uk> wrote:

The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:

Oh no, me mate and I wired the whole house to full CAT5/structured
cabling standards . BUT that isn't necessarily good enough for gigabit. Cable might have too much attenuation.

Many domestic installations don't get anywhere near the 305m that's the max in the ethernet spec. So you can get away with out of spec cabling because the spec expects the attenuation from 305m but you only have 30m.

Try it and see? Patch a couple of ports together (without using a switch), put a machine at each end and see if a gigabit link will come up and stably pass traffic. You might be surprised.

Yes, my experience is that tens of metres of home made (by me) CAT5
UTP cable does gigabit quite happily.

--
Chris Green
·

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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On 30/09/2023 17:22, Theo wrote:

The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:

Oh no, me mate and I wired the whole house to full CAT5/structured
cabling standards . BUT that isn't necessarily good enough for gigabit.
Cable might have too much attenuation.

Many domestic installations don't get anywhere near the 305m that's the max in the ethernet spec. So you can get away with out of spec cabling because the spec expects the attenuation from 305m but you only have 30m.

Try it and see? Patch a couple of ports together (without using a switch), put a machine at each end and see if a gigabit link will come up and stably pass traffic. You might be surprised.

yeah. Some of the links almost certainly would, But I checked the watts
on the one I have. Its pretty low - less than 20 - and I think I
wouldnt save much more than 10 watts.
And to find one that would physically fit was as much money as a PI4B or
more

So I am afraid Gigabit ethernet has been relegated to the 'nice to have,
some day' category

Theo

--
“Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities.”

― Voltaire, Questions sur les Miracles à M. Claparede, Professeur de Théologie à Genève, par un Proposant: Ou Extrait de Diverses Lettres de
M. de Voltaire

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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On 2023-09-29, Pancho <Pancho.Jones@proton.me> wrote:

1/. How much power is used by the spinning rust, when most of the time
its idle? I find three figures quoted, active, idle and sleeping. Around
6-7W active and a couple of watts spinning

They require a lot of power to spin up. That pretty much dictates they
cannot be powered from the rPi USB, even a 2.5" hdd requires a
separately powered USB to SATA connector.

Not necessarily. I run USB powered 2.5in hard drives from raspberry
pi's. Some are the Western Digitial USB external drvies, and others are
run from USB powered USB-SATA converters.

I also run 3.5in sata drives - but then you do need powered USB <-> SATA.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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On 2023-09-30, Chris Green <cl@isbd.net> wrote:

Theo <theom+news@chiark.greenend.org.uk> wrote:

The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:

Oh no, me mate and I wired the whole house to full CAT5/structured
cabling standards . BUT that isn't necessarily good enough for gigabit.
Cable might have too much attenuation.

Many domestic installations don't get anywhere near the 305m that's the max >> in the ethernet spec. So you can get away with out of spec cabling because >> the spec expects the attenuation from 305m but you only have 30m.

Try it and see? Patch a couple of ports together (without using a switch), >> put a machine at each end and see if a gigabit link will come up and stably >> pass traffic. You might be surprised.

Yes, my experience is that tens of metres of home made (by me) CAT5
UTP cable does gigabit quite happily.

And if it's cat5E then 100m or more works

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)

On 2023-09-30, Theo <theom+news@chiark.greenend.org.uk> wrote:

Oh no, me mate and I wired the whole house to full CAT5/structured
cabling standards . BUT that isn't necessarily good enough for gigabit.
Cable might have too much attenuation.

Many domestic installations don't get anywhere near the 305m that's the max in the ethernet spec. So you can get away with out of spec cabling because the spec expects the attenuation from 305m but you only have 30m.

The limit is 100m for 100BaseT/1000BaseT. Cat5e is good enough for 100m 1000BaseT, and lower-quality cabling should work for shorter runs.

Standard 4-wire telephone cable (star quad) works for >30m 100BaseT,
although the standard requires Cat5, twisted pair cable.

cu
Michael
--
Some people have no respect of age unless it is bottled.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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On 30/09/2023 21:50, Jim Jackson wrote:

On 2023-09-30, Chris Green <cl@isbd.net> wrote:

Theo <theom+news@chiark.greenend.org.uk> wrote:

The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:

Oh no, me mate and I wired the whole house to full CAT5/structured
cabling standards . BUT that isn't necessarily good enough for gigabit. >>>> Cable might have too much attenuation.

Many domestic installations don't get anywhere near the 305m that's the max >>> in the ethernet spec. So you can get away with out of spec cabling because >>> the spec expects the attenuation from 305m but you only have 30m.

Try it and see? Patch a couple of ports together (without using a switch), >>> put a machine at each end and see if a gigabit link will come up and stably >>> pass traffic. You might be surprised.

Yes, my experience is that tens of metres of home made (by me) CAT5
UTP cable does gigabit quite happily.

And if it's cat5E then 100m or more works

I am not sure what my longest run is. Could be around 50m
Anyway, 'fast enough and not power hungry enough' is my current feeling
on what I have


--
Ideas are more powerful than guns. We would not let our enemies have
guns, why should we let them have ideas?

Josef Stalin

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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On 30/09/2023 15:03, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

Theo

Oh no, me mate and I wired the whole house to full CAT5/structured
cabling standards . BUT that isn't necessarily good enough for gigabit.
Cable might have too much attenuation.

When I did mine, the problem I had was kinks in the wire, due to twist
from unrolling it badly, and the pulling it tight. Something about bend
radius. I found them and it is OK now.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)

On 01/10/2023 09:54, Michael Schwingen wrote:

On 2023-09-30, Theo <theom+news@chiark.greenend.org.uk> wrote:

Oh no, me mate and I wired the whole house to full CAT5/structured
cabling standards . BUT that isn't necessarily good enough for gigabit.
Cable might have too much attenuation.

Many domestic installations don't get anywhere near the 305m that's the max >> in the ethernet spec. So you can get away with out of spec cabling because >> the spec expects the attenuation from 305m but you only have 30m.

The limit is 100m for 100BaseT/1000BaseT. Cat5e is good enough for 100m 1000BaseT, and lower-quality cabling should work for shorter runs.

I *think* 305m was 10baseT?
Mmm. no. it seems ALL twisted pair ethernet is characterised as 100m..it
must be a delay issue rather than attentuation when doing all nodes
traffic.

Standard 4-wire telephone cable (star quad) works for >30m 100BaseT,
although the standard requires Cat5, twisted pair cable.

Wash yer mouth out with soap...


--
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
In practice, there is.
-- Yogi Berra

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)

On 30/09/2023 21:48, Jim Jackson wrote:

On 2023-09-29, Pancho <Pancho.Jones@proton.me> wrote:

1/. How much power is used by the spinning rust, when most of the time
its idle? I find three figures quoted, active, idle and sleeping. Around >>> 6-7W active and a couple of watts spinning

They require a lot of power to spin up. That pretty much dictates they
cannot be powered from the rPi USB, even a 2.5" hdd requires a
separately powered USB to SATA connector.

Not necessarily. I run USB powered 2.5in hard drives from raspberry
pi's. Some are the Western Digitial USB external drvies, and others are
run from USB powered USB-SATA converters.

I also run 3.5in sata drives - but then you do need powered USB <-> SATA.

Yes, sorry, I shouldn't have over generalized my own experience.

Nominally, the total power available from a rPi USB, for peripherals, is enough. I couldn't get it to work, reliably, but others may have a
better power supply to the rPi and may have a lower power 2.5" HDD.

My HDD is old, taken out of a new laptop about 10 years ago. Back then
it was cheaper to buy a laptop with an HDD, and replace it with a SSD,
rather than just buy one with an SSD, for some bizarre reason?

So I had the HDD just lying around and repurposed it for the rPi, it's
been running for 4 years, as a NAS, which has exceeded my expectations.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)

On 01/10/2023 10:49, Pancho wrote:

On 30/09/2023 15:03, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

Theo

Oh no, me mate and I wired the whole house to full CAT5/structured
cabling standards . BUT that isn't necessarily good enough for gigabit.
Cable might have too much attenuation.

When I did mine, the problem I had was kinks in the wire, due to twist
from unrolling it badly, and the pulling it tight. Something about bend radius. I found them and it is OK now.

I got lots of that.
probably. But it all works at 100...

--
"A point of view can be a dangerous luxury when substituted for insight
and understanding".

Marshall McLuhan

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:

I have decided that a headless Pi4B with 1GB RAM and some powered SATA
cables will do the biz.

Big issue will be packaging, and Ive stretched the goodwill of the mate
with a 3D printer a bit far..I hate itzy bitsy usb wall warts, and stuff
in separate boxes...

So a case with room for two 3.5" HDDs, the Pi4B, and a built-in
PSU? 3D printing all that might stretch any friendship. Why
wouldn't you just bung it all in an old desktop PC case, with a PC
PSU left in to power the HDDs and manually wired up to power the
Pi4 (you'll need ground the standby signal wire to make the PSU
turn on)?

The powered aspect is what makes USB-SATA adapters more expensive.
Those that come without power supplies are dirt cheap on Ebay,
although the cheap ones might not be reliable (I can confirm that
they're Linux-friendly though).

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#_ < |\| |< _#

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Computer Nerd Kev <not@telling.you.invalid> wrote:

The powered aspect is what makes USB-SATA adapters more expensive.
Those that come without power supplies are dirt cheap on Ebay,
although the cheap ones might not be reliable (I can confirm that
they're Linux-friendly though).

Well the USB2 ones are Linux-friendly anyway, I notice there are
now SATA-only USB3 ones. I was talking about the earlier 3-way
IDE/SATA ones, which are still available. https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/374701594944

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#_ < |\| |< _#

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On 2023-10-01, The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:

The limit is 100m for 100BaseT/1000BaseT. Cat5e is good enough for 100m
1000BaseT, and lower-quality cabling should work for shorter runs.

I *think* 305m was 10baseT?

No. For 10Base2, the limit was 185m, while 10Base5 (thick ethernet /
"yellow cable") could go up to 500m.

Mmm. no. it seems ALL twisted pair ethernet is characterised as 100m..it
must be a delay issue rather than attentuation when doing all nodes
traffic.

There is both attenuation, as well as maximum round-trip time so that collisions are properly detected everywhene on one segment.

Standard 4-wire telephone cable (star quad) works for >30m 100BaseT,
although the standard requires Cat5, twisted pair cable.

Wash yer mouth out with soap...

I would not install such an abomination, but if the wire is already in the wall, it is worth a try. At my mother's house, it works just fine.

cu
Michael
--
Some people have no respect of age unless it is bottled.

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On 01/10/2023 11:17, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
adius. I found them and it is OK now.

I got lots of that.
probably. But it all works at 100...

Yeah, mine initially worked at 100 Mb/s, I untwisted the kinks, and then
it worked at 1Gb/s. Probably lesson 101 for professional cable layers,
but it confused me. I was thinking length, when it was just kinks.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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On 01/10/2023 22:08, Pancho wrote:

On 01/10/2023 11:17, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
adius. I found them and it is OK now.

I got lots of that.
probably. But it all works at 100...

Yeah, mine initially worked at 100 Mb/s, I untwisted the kinks, and then
it worked at 1Gb/s. Probably lesson 101 for professional cable layers,
but it confused me. I was thinking length, when it was just kinks.

you do get reflections off kinks.

ANYWAY, no switch upgrade.

I have decided that a headless Pi4B with 1GB RAM and some powered SATA
cables will do the biz.

Big issue will be packaging, and Ive stretched the goodwill of the mate
with a 3D printer a bit far..I hate itzy bitsy usb wall warts, and stuff
in separate boxes...

--
Of what good are dead warriors? … Warriors are those who desire battle
more than peace. Those who seek battle despite peace. Those who thump
their spears on the ground and talk of honor. Those who leap high the
battle dance and dream of glory … The good of dead warriors, Mother, is
that they are dead.
Sheri S Tepper: The Awakeners.

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On 01 Oct 2023 at 22:08:12 BST, "Pancho" <Pancho.Jones@proton.me> wrote:

On 01/10/2023 11:17, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
adius. I found them and it is OK now.

I got lots of that.
probably. But it all works at 100...

Yeah, mine initially worked at 100 Mb/s, I untwisted the kinks, and then
it worked at 1Gb/s. Probably lesson 101 for professional cable layers,
but it confused me. I was thinking length, when it was just kinks.

You have to respect the bend radius. I said this to our Sparks and I think he was impressed.

While I was a SLAC we were using some 10Base2, and one physics group managed
to screw up one of the segments. Their offices had been wired, but they
decided to extend the segment down to the experiment, without asking anyone. And they used their quite thin 50-Ohm coax, which they normally used in patch cords in their equipment. Well of course this was quite a long extension with
a consequent high DC impedance, which messed up the collision detection.

And this was not all. They had a quest to "tidy up". Now those who remember 10Base2 will recall that the cable would have a T-piece inserted in it at the workstation location, and the T-piece was plugged into the ethernet socket on the back of the w/s. These physicists didn't like this, as it meant the
segment entered their office and then left it again. So they moved the segment and its T-piece out of the office, and connected a length of 50-ohm coax from the T-piece, into the office and then connected that to the w/s. Much tidier. This, it seems, messed up the cable impedance so they got lots of reflections and packet loss.

--
Tim

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On 2023-10-02, Computer Nerd Kev <not@telling.you.invalid> wrote:

Well the USB2 ones are Linux-friendly anyway, I notice there are
now SATA-only USB3 ones. I was talking about the earlier 3-way
IDE/SATA ones, which are still available. https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/374701594944

Be careful about size limits: some older adapters (and those supporting IDE *may* use older chips) have limits regarding the disk size they support:

https://superuser.com/questions/308492/is-there-a-size-limit-on-external-usb-hard-drives

When buying new, I would recommend USB3 SATA-only.

I have not yet found any USB adapter that did not work under Linux.
However, some do support SMART and some do not.

cu
Michael
--
Some people have no respect of age unless it is bottled.

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On 30/09/2023 11:25, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

On 29/09/2023 22:21, Jim Jackson wrote:

Does 3 years and counting of 24/7 mean I've killed my Pi :-)
My Pi powers a USB connected 2.5 spinning disk just fine.

I think the answer would be 'it depends on the drive and if linux is configured to spin down on idle' .
You are in effect powering an electric motor and the more friction there
is and the more rpms you want it to do. in general, the more power it
will need

2.5 inch drives will spin themselves down automatically as they are
aimed at laptops, or I should say were, given everything has a SSD these
days.

I used to use my ASUS router which had a USB3 port to attach a drive to
work as a HOME NAS, but when the Pi 4B came out with gigabit Ethernet
and USB3, I moved it over to that as it was much faster and allowed
Linux friendly NFS as well as SMB.

The drives I've been using are Samsung M3 and later sold as Maxtor M3
USB3 drives, instead of being SATA drives in a USB caddy these just have
USB interfaces so are very low power and spin down quite quickly.

I've recently replaced it with a Samsung T7 portable USB SSD, which
eliminates the slight spin up delay every time you access the shared
drive. The Maxtor M3 is now on another Pi 4B as a nightly backup to the
SSD, and the original Samsung M3 on a Pi 3B is a weekly off site backup.

My Pi 4Bs are all in cases and I use 40mm rather than 30mm fans to keep
these cool and quiet.

---druck

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On 30/09/2023 17:22, Theo wrote:

The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:

Oh no, me mate and I wired the whole house to full CAT5/structured
cabling standards . BUT that isn't necessarily good enough for gigabit.
Cable might have too much attenuation.

Very old Cat5 is dodgy, but 5e is normally fine for short runs.

Many domestic installations don't get anywhere near the 305m that's the max in the ethernet spec. So you can get away with out of spec cabling because the spec expects the attenuation from 305m but you only have 30m.

Try it and see? Patch a couple of ports together (without using a switch), put a machine at each end and see if a gigabit link will come up and stably pass traffic. You might be surprised.

Good advice to check each segment individually, as I wasn't getting
gigabit across the house in both directions, but found it was due to one
cable that had been kinked too hard and lost a pair. Ironically was a
short bit of still shiny new cable, not the 30m segment of older very
much used looking wire which had been bent around lots of corners in my
old house. Replacing that 5m section gave me ~970mbs each way.

---druck

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On 02/10/2023 20:23, druck wrote:

Good advice to check each segment individually, as I wasn't getting
gigabit across the house in both directions, but found it was due to one cable that had been kinked too hard and lost a pair. Ironically was a
short bit of still shiny new cable, not the 30m segment of older very
much used looking wire which had been bent around lots of corners in my
old house. Replacing that 5m section gave me ~970mbs each way.

Many years ago, we had sent an engineer down to the London office of a Prestigious Accountancy Firm that oddly enough ceased to exist
overnight* some years later, to install an ISDN router to Connect Them
To The Internet.

We got a furious call from a junior executive threatening legal action
if we didn't come down this minute and fix it, because it didn't fucking
work. In a big organisation if you have been tasked with something and
it stops working it's such a blot on your copybook that its career
threatening. One reason why I hate big companies personally.

As technical director, I went down with my best engineer to sort it out.
The BT engineer had already arrived, and we spoke to him 'stupid cunt'
he said. 'There's some sort of wiring fault inside the building, I've
checked it at the router and its fucked, but it's fine at the
termination point where it enters the building, so it's not my problem,
and its now chargeable'. And he wandered off to whatever dimensions BT engineers go to when not active., I suspect like cats, they simply
inhabit a different universe...

The Junior Executive was still in a bad temper 'Its all right, you can
go now' (another hour and a half on tube and train) '*I* have found the
fault' (he couldn't find his own arse). 'And what was it? We enquired
sweetly. He took us to a steel cupboard where he had insisted the
router be installed, and pointed to the cable, practically sliced in
half by the person who have closed the door on a trailing ISDN lead
casually routed across the office floor.

A we left I asked my engineer, 'who laid that cable?' ' He did. The ONLY
thing he did do - I will never work in a place like that even if I would
get three times the money you pay me'.

Oh yes, wiring issues are no stranger...

*2002. Enron. Google it


--
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and
wrong.

H.L.Mencken

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On 03/10/2023 09:11, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

On 02/10/2023 20:23, druck wrote:
Many years ago, we had sent an engineer down to the London office of a Prestigious Accountancy Firm that oddly enough ceased to exist
overnight* some years later, to install an ISDN router to Connect Them
To The Internet.

[snip]

*2002. Enron. Google it

That would be a _creative_ accountancy firm. :-)

---druck

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On 03/10/2023 12:07, druck wrote:

On 03/10/2023 09:11, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

On 02/10/2023 20:23, druck wrote:
Many years ago, we had sent an engineer down to the London office of a
Prestigious Accountancy Firm that oddly enough ceased to exist
overnight* some years later, to install an ISDN router to Connect Them
To The Internet.

[snip]

*2002. Enron. Google it

That would be a _creative_ accountancy firm. :-)

They were at one point my previous firms accountants. They told us how
to break the law and make a lot of money. By 'dressing' the company
accounts prior to flotation.

A bit like El Trump is accused of these days.

Really, if he was a democrat no one would have cared.

---druck

--
"The most difficult subjects can be explained to the most slow witted
man if he has not formed any idea of them already; but the simplest
thing cannot be made clear to the most intelligent man if he is firmly persuaded that he knows already, without a shadow of doubt, what is laid
before him."

- Leo Tolstoy

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On 2023-10-02, druck <news@druck.org.uk> wrote:

Very old Cat5 is dodgy, but 5e is normally fine for short runs.

According to the standards, Cat5e is sufficient for 1000BaseT over the full 100m - if it is properly installed and not damaged.

cu
Michael
--
Some people have no respect of age unless it is bottled.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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On 03/10/2023 14:47, Michael Schwingen wrote:

On 2023-10-02, druck <news@druck.org.uk> wrote:

Very old Cat5 is dodgy, but 5e is normally fine for short runs.

According to the standards, Cat5e is sufficient for 1000BaseT over the full 100m - if it is properly installed and not damaged.

cu
Michael

I dunno what I installed back in the day. 2001? whatever was current then

Hmm on the cusp between 5 and 5e.


--
Canada is all right really, though not for the whole weekend.

"Saki"

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