Why does read-only client wake up my disk?

[greentown]

Hi,

I posted a related thread here, but this post is about looking at the problem from a different angle.

I have a linux machine with read-only secrets synchronising with a Windows machine. When the Windows machine is off, the linux machine should basically do nothing, since it is a read only client. However, every 30 minutes my HDD is woken up. Since it is a read-only share and no file can have changed, why does btsync wake up my hard disk?

Best regards,

Greentown

[GreatMarko]

Since it is a read-only share and no file can have changed, why does btsync wake up my hard disk?

Sync still has to keep track of the contents of each folder that's being synced.

Therefore, whether a folder has a full-access secret, or a read-only secret, Sync still regularly indexes the folder - in your case, every 30 minutes, as a fail-safe in case any real-time changes were not picked up.

The solution is to increase the advanced "folder_rescan_interval" setting, this will allow your hard disk to sleep for longer

[lolcat]

Why on earth would it do this? Unless you are seeding there is no point in reindexing the files.

[Harold Feit]

Counterpoint: what's the point in spinning down the disk. A hard disk takes most of its damage during spin-up and spin-down cycles. More than ANY amount of usage in between.

[capi]

@Herold Feit: this seems a weak counter-point because in case of very rare changes on a disk, the power saved and the noise reduction can be worth the additional wear of the disk drive itself.

 

I agree with lolcat that there should be no need for re-indexing on read-only secrets as changes are not going to be sent anywhere anyways.