Introduction

I love my Infrant Technologies ReadyNAS box (Network Attached Storage). It is has RAID4 robustness, gigabit Ethernet, and 1.2TB (4 x 400GB RAID4 hard drives). I use it to consolidate, organize just about everything:

• Software
• Music
• Movies
• Photos
• Personal Finance Statements

The consolidation and availability capability that a NAS platform allows is awesome. For example, recently while on a road trip, Hannah wanted to show some photos with the people we were staying with. She just VPN'd into our house network, and browsed all our digital photos we have ever taken. Awesome!

Hard Drive Longevity

To have your stuff always available 24/7 means keeping the NAS box powered on 24/7. Unfortunately, the more hours on, the faster a hard drive will fail.

In the three years I have kept my ReadyNAS box powered on 24/7, I have had to replace eight individual hard drives. In other words, my NAS box is on its third set of hard drives. I have always wanted to put my NAS box on a daily automated on/off schedule to extend hard drive life as well as save energy. In 2008, a new ReadyNAS firmware release "Version 4" included an automated power on/off scheduling feature. Alas, I learned I could automate powering off my NAS box, but not powering it on. The power-on event was supported only on the most recent ReadyNAS hardware versions and not my 2005 "Rev. A" model. Bummer.

Cheap Hardware Appliance Timer to Power On NAS

Nevertheless, I tried to take advantage of the new firmware by scheduling a power off event every night. Then, I tried to remember to turn my NAS box on every morning. It didn't work out. Inevitably, I would try to access the NAS box only to realize that I had forgotten to turn it on first thing in the morning. So, I would have to turn it on and then wait for the boot up process before I could access whatever I needed. Major inconvenience.

Then, I recalled that my ReadyNAS 600 would with "auto power up." That is, if ReadyNAS 600 was off, unplugged then replugged, it would power on. This behavior is in contrast to ACPI-compliant PCs, which will not automatically power on if you toggle the powersupply switch OFF then ON or if you unplug then plug the PC. I found this behavior irritating especially in the beginning because I would forget this behavior when I moved my NAS box and plugged it back in but wasn't ready for it to be powered up just yet.

I began to think if I could exploit this "auto power up feature" with by putting my NAS box on an appliance timer. Initially, I thought this idea was hokey and was skeptical. However, the cost of an appliance timer ($10) was cheap, and I was really getting tired of frequent hard drive failures...

Setup

The appliance timer was really cheap, about $10 for an Intermatic brand at Home Depot and trivial to use. I set the timer to turn off at 5:30a and turn on at 6:30a.

 

Daily Power On-Off Schedule