I have built a silent linux box, the box contains no fans at all (not even on the CPU cooler or PSU). The only thing thats not silent is the hard drive, its a 5200rpm Seagate ST340015A.

I want the drive to spin down after about 30 minutes but as soon as the drive spins down, it spins back up again. I think the OS is doing this but I can't be certain.

If I try hdparm -Z I get this message:

disabling Seagate auto powersaving mode
HDIO_DRIVE_CMD(seagatepwrsave) failed: Input/output error

If I do hdparm -y the drive spins down then immediately back up again, and if I do hdparm -Y it spins down for a short while then spins back up again with the following message in the kernel ring buffer:

hda: drive not ready for command
ide0: reset: success

I am using ext3.

Any help will be much appreciated.

Hey man if you keep running without cooling your box will soon be silent forever unless you live in Siberia.

But you'll still be able to use the case and the cables for a new computer.

I also have problem with that. I don't know if it's safe but I allmost solve my problem with those commands:

hdparm -S6 /dev/hda

[but like you, the disk frequently spin up, I think the problem is in the cache so...]

and (dangerous part?)

example in /etc/fstab : /dev/hda1 / ext3 defaults,commit=600 1 1
commit=600 will force to save the data on disc after... 600 seconds (10 minutes). One is sure, if you experience power failure you will lose the data from 10 last minutes. But I think the command sync will flush the data to the drive.

I suspect when cunitt said "I have no fans", they meant they have other methods of cooling their computer.

A lot of the mini-ITC boards and some of the "other brands" lower-power chips don't need any sort of cooling whatsoever. You only need cooling for the mini-ITX boards when they start hitting about 1Ghz or so... also there are a lot of other specialised boards and chips that don't need cooling at all.

Not to mention he could be using other methods of cooling that are silent. For example, I have an 450W completely fanless Power Supply in the computer I'm sitting on now - it's all done with internal heatpipes etc. and costs about the same as a decent fan equivalent. It's runs completely silent, no moving parts etc.

It's not hard to build a completely silent, no moving part PC except where storage is concerned but even then, you have CompactFlash IDE adaptors and this new-fangled "Flash memory" hard disk from Toshiba or whoever, it's just a matter of paying for it and getting the components. And really, why would you want a fan-filled monstrosity if it's going to be, say, a desktop machine or a set-top-box style Linux machine?

Anyway, the chances are that it's the writeback buffers that access the disk every now and again, sometimes prompted by daemons that like to write out tmp files for every access. Although there is stuff you can do about it (like increasing buffers, decreasing sync times etc.) the chances are that you will risk losing something along the way if the machine powers off. You could try mounting /tmp as a RAM disk, that will save a lot of writes etc. but at the cost of a bit of RAM. You could also try:

http://noflushd.sourceforge.net/

Thanks for the info guys, I'll give that a try.

Just so you know, the motherboard and CPU *is* designed to be fanless. I'm not crazy enough to try and run an ATX system with no fans Its an ITX VIA EPIA 5000 Fanless motherboard and the case is a Morex Cubid 2699 with 60w fanless power supply (effectively a laptop power supply)

Hi guys,

Althoug making the hdd spin down does make it silent, you can also set its acoustic parameters to lower value, making it more silent too. Try something like:

I think the default value is something like 255 or 254, 2 or 3 points down should be OK, this comes at some minor performance cost however, and my suggestion is based on my experience from few years ago and windows based machine, not that this makes difference on the specific subject.

If silence is your goal, then consider searching the web for a used Seagate that has fluid dynamic bearings. I use a Seagate ST340016A (40 GB), which also runs at a faster 7200 rpm. Very nice and very quiet. These drives nowadays, in computer terms, are considered "obsolete" and can be had in used condition inexpensively.

Probably so. Consider that the system logs are continually updating and hitting the drive. If you check /var/log/messages, you'll notice that even with an idle box that log is hit every 20 minutes with --MARK-- messages, which serves only to inform you that the system is still working. You can disable that message if you want (Eliminating Some Common Nuisance Messages). But if you are running other logs, such as samba, then I doubt you ever will get the drive into a meaningful spin-down state. (Although with samba you can configure the debug level to zero to create minimalist logs.)

Not really, Randux. I have been running a silent box for several years. On my socket-7 box I replaced the original Pentium MMX with a K6-III+, which runs at something like 15 watts. The original heat sink is more than sufficient to keep the CPU cool. No CPU fan required. I also use a Seagate hard drive with dynamic fluid bearings. I do run one chassis fan, but I have spliced carbon resistors into the wires to run the fan silently at 7 volts. I have had people stand in the room and actually ask me what kind of magic I am using to create a display on my monitor without running my computer. I smile and tell them to place their ear directly next to the box and then they barely hear the noise inside the chassis. They are always amazed.

I spliced resistors into the power supply fan too.

The first few days after I rebuilt the computer into a silent box, I tended to panic for a few milliseconds because without the noise I though the system had died. But thereafter I would never use a noisy computer ever again, which is why I am resistant to buying new hardware. Building a silent box with older hardware is much easier than with newer hardware.

I hate noisy computers.