No S3 Sleep!!

[jcjefferies]

I’ve just invested in an HP Microserver to become my NextPVR server and found that it only supports S4 Hibernation. The slower server start up time after WOL is only a minor irritation because my client start up script already waits for the server to be fully on line before starting NextPVR. The main problem is going to be the occasional missed Wakeup to start a recording happening during the now much longer Hibernation process. It takes 2 ½ minutes during which time its deaf to any wakeup command! The problem of missed Wakeups keeps cropping up. One work around mentioned would be to prevent sleep/hibernation if a recording is due to start within around 10 minutes.

My plan is at the end of a recording to run a script to check if another recording is due to start within the next say 10 minutes. If the answer is “yes” then start a batch file which does nothing except run counting down 900 seconds. SmartPower is able to prevent sleep/hibernation if any of a number of settings are true, one of which is if a specified process is running. I hope to prevent the server going to sleep/hibernation while this batch file is running by which time the next recording will already started. Has anyone got a better solution?

[Lao Pan]

The HP Microserver should have a power consumption of less than 20 watts once all the hard drives have spun down - which is about half of the power consumption of a sky hd box in standby mode.
My Microserver running Unraid as a Media Server has only been shut down once in over 2 years - when we moved house.
S3 would be useful but still uses almost as much power as an idle always on computer.

[martint123]

Mine is (are) on 24/7 as consumption is minimal. It also removes the problems I had with USB tuners freezing at times when coming out of standby/hibernate.

[jcjefferies]

Thanks I will look into the option of leaving the server powered on. I do have an old electric meter configured so I can plug an appliance into it and measure the power consumption over days or weeks. I am also going to look at the use of the SmartPower utility as a way of keeping the computer from sleeping if a recording in imminent. However as it replaces the Windows sleep/hibernate system it will need some careful testing.