Admin and Tech staff, please impliment this ability. My internal hard drives do this. My external hard drives do this. The drives fitted to the LS220D can do this - but the LS220D itself doesn't shut them down when inactive for a period of time. It has to be such and easy thing to add and implement. Why not add this to your NAS drives.
As with Joakim, my drive doesn't need to run 24/7. It's there for storage (the 'S' in NAS), and I don't mind waiting a few extra seconds for the drive to wake up and spin up when access is required to files.
As with Joakim, I don't think I even use it 10% of the day. Yet the drives are running non-stop. It's burning electricity, which is burning my money, and going to burn the drives out prematurely. All I can see is that this drive will cost me a fortune in electricity over time, and ultimately fail way before it should. Thus costing a fortune to run, and a hefty bill to replace it with a new NAS drive - which unless it has the ability to spin the inactive drives down, won't be a Buffalo when the time comes.
Most other NAS drives have this feature. It's a simple software solution to save the hardware, save electricity, and save money. Please make and update with this feature ASAP. It's so easy to do.
It's a shame that a good, easy to setup and use, NAS drive is ruined by the lack of such a simple feature.
I wish I'd researched NAS drives a little more, and especially the Buffalo. Because if I'd realized the LS220D didn't have this feature, I wouldn't have bought it. Nor will I be buying any more Buffalo NAS drives in the future, unless they have it.
Which is a shame, as i'd had my eye on something like a pair of Terastation 1400's (16TB) for the future - but will be buying an alternative that definitely provides the option of having the drives spin down and sleep when not accessed for some time.
The Sleep option currently in my LS220D isn't useful, as it's stupid to have a system you have to wake up by pressing a button on a drive in a cupboard, in another room, just to access a file for a few minutes. Especially if access across the web is needed. Absolutely impractical and useless feature. Goes against the whole point of having NAS storage.
Please fix it. Add the feature to the software.
Suggestion:
I wish for an option to have the LS220D spin down the drives, after a user configurable amount of time have lapsed without access. The drives would then spin up again when someone access them.
If possible there could be a second time-out, after which the whole unit would be turned off (like the scheduled on/off option already in the settings). It would then turn on when accessed.
Reason:
In my home, a NAS is used just a fraction of the time. At most I believe it's used 10% of the time. I think most homes are similar.
If the drives are turned off when not in use, I expect their life will be extended considerably.
Power usage would decrease, and less heat generated, which would benefit the life expectancy of the NAS unit as a whole.
My previous NAS (DLink DNS-320) has this feature, and I have used the same drives for 5 years now with no problems.