# ZFS powering down drives if not in use



## beadon (Apr 1, 2011)

Hey, so I was thinking about my power bill today .. I run 6 HDDs at once from a file server using zfs raidz2.  This is great because it allows me to utilize the space as one contiguous block and not worry unless more than a single drive bites the dust.

... but... is there an option somewhere to power down the drives after X seconds of inactivity ?  Can something be stored on a flash drive to keep the power utilization low and only power up the *right* disks when certain files are *read* ?  How about when written ?  Has anyone done this before ?  Are there other options that make sense with this in mind that still have the resiliency of raidz or raidz2 ?

Using this feature could really make a dent in cooling and power bills for a lot of people where initial access time is not much of an issue !

I eagerly await a response!


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## danbi (Apr 2, 2011)

Not sure if this helps, but with (any) raidz, you read from all drives and write to all drives for any read/write operation. That is, you either have all drives active, or all drives inactive at the same time.


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