[solved] Hard drives continually spinning up (smartd polling?)

Question

My system boots off a USB stick. Additionally, I have four hard drives configured as two RAID1 arrays:
/dev/md/backup uses a Seagate ST31500341AS and a WD2003FZEX
/dev/md/data uses a Hitachi HUA723020ALA640 and a WD2001FASS
Because these are seldom used, to save power, I have these configured to spin down after 20 minutes of inactivity. However, every half hour, the Seagate and Hitachi drives spin up, coinciding with smartd events in journalctl. For example,
Jun 26 11:34:33 localhost smartd[2561]: Device: /dev/sdb [SAT], SMART Usage Attribute: 190 Airflow_Temperature_Cel changed from 65 to 66
Jun 26 11:34:33 localhost smartd[2561]: Device: /dev/sdb [SAT], SMART Usage Attribute: 194 Temperature_Celsius changed from 35 to 34
Jun 26 11:34:33 localhost smartd[2561]: Device: /dev/sdc [SAT], SMART Usage Attribute: 194 Temperature_Celsius changed from 119 to 122
I do, however, have "-n standby" specified for all four drives in /etc/smartd.conf (see listing below).
Oddly, the WD drives remain spun down; just the Seagate and Hitachi drives are spinning up. I would like to avoid their spinning up every half hour (shortened lifespan and all that). One possibility is to increase smartd's polling interval, but that seems like more of a workaround. Does anyone have any better suggestions on how to fix this?
Thanks!
/etc/smartd.conf listing (large swath of comments elided for brevity):
# Doesn't support APM setting.
/dev/disk/by-id/ata-ST31500341AS_[S/N_REDACTED] \
-a -d ata -o off -S on \
-e aam,128 -e standby,240 \
-s (S/../.././00|L/../../6/01|O/../.././04) \
-W 0,0,40 -n standby,q -m [email protected]
# Doesn't support AAM setting.
/dev/disk/by-id/ata-Hitachi_HUA723020ALA640_[S/N_REDACTED] \
-a -d ata -o off -S on \
-e apm,127 -e standby,240 \
-s (S/../.././00|L/../../6/01|O/../.././04) \
-W 0,0,40 -n standby,q -m [email protected]
# Doesn't support APM setting.
# Doesn't support AAM setting.
/dev/disk/by-id/ata-WDC_WD2003FZEX-00Z4SA0_[S/N_REDACTED] \
-a -d ata -o off -S on \
-e standby,240 \
-s (S/../.././00|L/../../6/01|O/../.././04) \
-W 0,0,40 -n standby,q -m [email protected]
/dev/disk/by-id/ata-WDC_WD2001FASS-00W2B0_[S/N_REDACTED] \
-a -d ata -o off -S on \
-e aam,128 -e apm,127 -e standby,240 \
-s (S/../.././00|L/../../6/01|O/../.././04) \
-W 0,0,40 -n standby,q -m [email protected]
Last edited by tazmanian (2014-06-27 05:01:53)

Answer 1

Apparently, I had an uncommented DEVICESCAN in the middle of /etc/smartd.conf. Commenting it out and restarting smartd fixed the issue.