Almost permanent write action on my drives

[angelus249]

Hi Forum,

not sure where to post, as it's a bit of everything, so I'll just post here in the general Help/Support section. Please let me explain.

First my setup:

• 4x4TB, drives destined for 24/7, disks set to always-on
• RAID-Z1
• latest FreeNAS 9.3 incl. updates
• CIFS shares
• Plex Server running in dedicated Jail (didn't use the plugin setup)

Issue:
Well, the performance is great, I can write with 100MB/s via my GBit network, no complaints here. When I copy something I can clearly hear the disks working with .. well, typical HDD writing sounds, something like "tack tack tack" in a quite frequent interval - so far so normal! But when the NAS is idle, neither write nor read access, the disks still do the "tack" noise like when I write on it, however in a way longer interval, around every 4-5 seconds. When I read data, the disks are completely quiet.

That said, I'm wondering about two things:

• What might cause that permanent write access? Is that normal? And if not, how could I change that?
• Does it do any harm on the long run?

Thanks!
angelus

 

[Ericloewe]

.system dataset.

Nothing to worry about.

 

[angelus249]

I see, thanks. Is it then mainly the syslog being written on the volume? I could setup a syslog server for that...

 

[Ericloewe]

I see, thanks. Is it then mainly the syslog being written on the volume? I could setup a syslog server for that...

That's certainly an option, but the dataset also contains some stuff related to Samba 4 - not sure how much of it is regularly accessed, though.

 

[danb35]

...not to mention the RRD databases.

 

[angelus249]

...not to mention the RRD databases.

Well, the option to store RRD data is disabled by default and I don't really need it, so I'll leave it disabled atm.

Anyway, thanks for the input. I'll play around a bit, disabling the syslog feature for a while and see if there is a change in behavior, then maybe setup a syslog server.

Cheers