xeros

Thanks, I think I'll have to do something about that as I use its CPU to the max serving variety of services from it to all devices in my home.

Thx. Unloading sun4i_gpadc_iio kernel module: sudo rmmod sun4i_gpadc_iio reduced in my case CPU usage by kworker processes from ~21% to floating 5-12% (without trace log change). While sun4i_gpadc is still loaded and unloading it doesn't make anything better than this, however got single error about reading thermal in dmesg: [ 5498.530760] thermal thermal_zone0: failed to read out thermal zone (-110) Edit: And one more thing - on kernel 4.14.15-sunxi I'm not able to set CPU frequency above 960MHz: $ echo 1008000 | sudo tee /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/scaling_max_freq 1008000 $ cat /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/scaling_max_freq 960000 $ The board worked fine so far @1008MHz 24h/7 for few years on 3.4.x

I confirm 2 kworker processes constantly using CPU: - kworker/1:0 12-18% - kworker/0:0 2-8% on fresh Stretch 5.38 on Banana Pro running from fast microSDHC card. Both processes use together ~21% CPU all the time. kworker/1:0 12-18% (mostly gc_worker for nf_conntrack) - even on disabled IP forwarding & NAT, and almost no traffic: kworker/0:0: 2-8% (even with disabled cursor flashing on framebuffer screen by: echo -n -e '\e[?17;14;224c' > /dev/tty0 and no vmstat running) iostat doesn't show any I/O on disk or microsd card and memory usage is at ~30%, not swapping. I tried stopping most of the running processes but that didn't change anything, too. It's quite irritating that having not so much CPU power, performance is even more impacted (visible in my case for any web services configured again later - openmediavauilt, owncloud, traccar,...). Previously I used similar configuration but on much older Bananian Wheezy (still up-to-date from repos) with kernel 3.4.x and kworkers took there some cycles only when I/O was high, but not impacting performance that much, especially in idle.

Right, thanks. I've got two of them today (similar ones, but having different weight) and so far so good - tested them both with few older 2,5" & 3,5" disks around and no problems in few hours of stress tests. So, now I think I'll buy 4TB WD Red 3,5" disk :-)

I have ordered this (12V 2A + 5V 2A) one: http://allegro.pl/zasilacz-hdd-3-5-cd-rom-dvd-12v-2a-5v-2a-molex-i7028661180.html that I'm going to use with MOLEX to SATA power cable. Let's hope it will be OK. @copytco, I'll let you know how it works when I'll get it. I have few older 2,5" & 3,5" disks around for testing.

I'm second to that - could anyone recommend good 12V+5V power adapter to that for reasonable price? So far I've been successfully running (for over a year or two 24h/7) Banana Pro on 5V 2A MicroUSB power with two HDDs together (320GB 2,5" connected via USB 2.0 adapter & 500GB 2,5" connected to SATA, powered from Banana Pro board SATA power connector), but recently I've got undervoltage problem (not sure if it's the board or the power cable adapter) - just connecting the 320GB USB disk shuts off the board on disk spin up (even nothing else connected) and 500GB disk on SATA gets SATA reset many times on disk spin up (also no other devices connected). Disks do not have such issues being connected to laptop (with the same USB-SATA adapter), but still probably reaching EOL (7y of work, mostly 24h/7 and SMART is not so happy). I'm currently thinking about single bigger disk (2TB-4TB) rather 3,5" connected to SATA with 12V+5V external power supply (which one?) or connecting to USB 2.0 port with USB 3.0 actively powered disk case (with 12V power adapter). I know that USB 2.0 will be performance bottleneck, but I think that somewhere next year (in half year or later) I'll buy something more powerful than Banana Pro (ROCK64 or something on Allwinner H6 with USB 3.0) and need to find some solution for now where I can re-use the disk later with new board. PS. Sorry for HW questions here, but discussion is already ongoing and @tkaiser you'll covering here very important topics and it seems we can't get better support on other forums.