hdd and filesystem

Hard drives have many power modes available known as EPC settings.
Idle_A - disable processor, disk is still rotating at full speed
Idle_B - same as A, but the head is unloaded
Idle_C - likely SAS only

File System

fdisk is a Debian command line utility that initialize disks and partition tables (if not using gparted)

• m for help
• g to create a new GPT partition table
• n to create a new partition such as /dev/sda1
• w to write the change to disk

After a partition is created, use mkfs to create a filesystem

sudo mkfs.ext4 -m 0 -T largefile4 -E lazy_itable_init=0,lazy_journal_init=0 /dev/sda1

• -m 0 leaves no reserved space
• largefile4 makes each inode larger, these option and -m 0 is most recommended for snapraid parity drive
• -E additional options include no lazy init, this option will fully finish initialization process after creating the filesystem

openseachest

Tool by Seagate that is used to change EPC settings of hard drives.
Install

sudo ./openSeaChest_PowerControl --scan # get list of device

sudo ./openSeaChest_PowerControl -d /dev/sg0 --showEPCSettings

• use -d to select the device to show the EPC settings