atc98092 wrote:Serviio itself must be running constantly to be able to be available at any time for a player's request. One of Serviio's tasks is to monitor for new files. Depending on the operating system, that might require periodically accessing the drives to query for new files. I have no idea if any of my hard drives go to sleep on my Windows Serviio PCs.
The program itself can stay up and running in the computer’s (NAS’s) memory, without accessing any files.
When setting up a media source for Serviio you can specify if you want to use a “poller” to have Serviio search for new files or file changes. The instructions say: “Normally Serviio uses the operating system event based file changes notifications. This might not work well in certain situations (like for remote drives or mounted file systems). You can use the poller mechanism where Serviio manages the changes to files itself”.
This “poller” certainly would need to access disks - but I’m not using it (default setting).
I have multiple servers running on my NAS - because I have different needs for the streaming of my music:
- Serviio to send my multichannel high-resolution (.dsf) files to a multichannel-capable renderer,
- Minimserver to stream my 2-channel .dsf files (I can stream them directly to my Marantz receiver, without need for an external renderer),
- OwnTone for the large chunk of my music (mp3 and aac files). It’s an iTunes server which I can access using iTunes Remote and listen to my music on a wider variety of devices using Apple AirPlay 2.
Both Minimserver and OwnTone are running in the RAM of the NAS, listening to play or stream requests - and are not accessing any disks while just waiting for commands. They get into action if they either get a playback request, or (Minimserver) if they get a notification of updated files in the monitored folders. Other than that, the disks stop and the server goes to sleep, waiting for commands.
Serviio, too, should just be waiting for commands and not access disks while being idle.