I can't figure this one out, my file server keeps locking up after the hard drives shut down from inactivity.

Here's whats happening, the hard drives are set to power off after 2 hours of inactivity. After the time passes if you attempt to access any files from the system over the network the system appears to be shut off (none of the other systems can see the file server). If you attempt to log onto the system directly it gives you the password prompt as normal, after providing login credentials the profile loads you see the desktop everything appears fine for about 3 seconds then it freezes to the point where the mouse doesn't even move... the only way to recover from this is to do a hard shut down by holding in the powerbutton or yanking the plug out of the back and re-booting the system. After rebooting everything works fine until the drives goto sleep again. Telling the system to never power down the hard drives makes the issue disappear.

The system is pretty old I bought it back in '05 and it has pretty much been running 24/7 since, this issue has just recently surfaced so at first I thought it might be an issue with the powersupply not being able to handle all the drives powering up at the same time or something so I replaced the powersupply. It appears that was not the issue... now I'm out of ideas my next option is an overhaul but I'd like to avoid that if at all possible... or at least until I can get a Core i3 and SATA3/USB3 equipped motherboard... I'd hate to invest in a replacement server on the eve of a new drive connection standard going primetime.

This is the configuration of the server:

Gigabyte GA-K8N Ultra-9 [Skt939 / nforce 4 Ultra chipset]
Athlon X2 4600+ on Thermaltake aftermarket cooler
2GB OCZ Platinum PC3200 RAM
GeForce 6200 PCIe GPU
2x 1TB WD Caviar Blacks in RAID1
1x 1TB WD Caviar Black stand alone
1x 320GB WD Caviar RE
650W Corsair HX PSU
Windows Server 2003 Enterprise

System is configured to function as a Routing and remote access server, DHCP server, and File server.

anyone have any suggestions or ideas? Do you think it would be bad to just leave the drives running all the time?

link to the motherboard:

http://www.gigabyte.com.tw/Products/Motherboard/Products_Spec....uctID=1868

Hard drive problem, perhaps. How old is the system hdd? May be the hdd is getting old, and doesn't like to be power down and power up again. Why can't you just leave the power setting on all time for the hdds?

The system boots from the RAID1 array, those drives are about 1 month old.
The single 1TB WD Caviar Black is about 2 months old.
and the 320GB drive is about 2 years old.

Will leaving the drives spinning all the time reduce their life substantially?

Those are not old at all. LOL

MrBungle said:
I am wondering that myself. I only put hdds to sleep for laptops, desktops I leave them on. But I don't run my desktops 24/7, like you do with the server.

Dr. Peaceful said:
With modern quality drives Powering off/on isn't as much of a problem as in the past. That said, I know that drives are designed to take a certain number of power-off/on cycles per day when they determine MTBF, and that POOC number is probably rather low. Personally, I'd ask if the availability of the server is critical and these brief outages are causing real-life significant problems, if they are then I'd leave the drives on 24/7 (but then Al might come knocking on your door).

In my experience Windows has had a Looooong history of problems when people use the sleep/hibernate and display and/or disk power-down settings.

If you want to check the drives' health, there are serveral apps out there that may help. You may have to test them individually in another machine but the results may not be as useful since you won't have an analysis based on trend data.

One program you might look at for ideas is "DiskCheckup". It continually monitors the SMART data from your drives and attempts to provide a predicted date when a disk may become unreliable. It does not support RAID arrays so its usefulness to you may be limited. This is where I indicated in-situ evaluation may not be possible. However, you may be able to find a program that provides similar functionality for a RAID array.
http://www.passmark.com/products/diskcheckup.htm
It's free for personal use, and can be licensed if not.

edit to clarify paragraph

turning the server off is not really an option since it functions as my networks router/DHCP server in addition to file server duties.

That's generally what I do, but I keep my fileserver drives running. I never had any problems with them not spinning back up from standby (although it runs Linux), but waiting for 3+ seconds got old for me.

you can not use hdd power options with a raid setup. the raid controller can provide spin down and other power saving options.
if you set this power saving feature in windows then it will attempt to do that to all drives in the system, which is why your system locks up.

Bot,

Thanks! I was not aware of that... I guess I'll have to look for some sort of similar option in the RAID controler.