CIFS constant writes when share is mapped as network drive

[xviruz]

I have a file server set up with my system dataset and all jails on an SSD and my data on a raidz2 pool with 8 HDDs. For the HDD pool, I expose 3 SAMBA shares, which I map as network drives on my Windows 7 (x64, Pro) desktop.

I've noticed that having the shares mapped as network drives creates a consistent <30KB write to all 8 HDDs every minute, even when my desktop is totally idle (i.e., not accessing any data from the file server). Changing the CIFS service's log level has no effect. However, unmapping the network drives stops these writes completely (and I can still access my files via \\FREENAS\<share>\).

Does anyone know why this is? Also, since there's no iotop on FreeNAS, are there any tools that I could run to see what process and location is being written to on the HDDs?

 

[xviruz]

Realized I could just look at the resource manager to see if it's a system process on Windows. The culprit is actually an application, HostsMan, which I'd set to read two files from my file server as hosts sources. I'm not sure why it'd cause writes though, as neither file is being modified or touched.

 

[anodos]

Do you have atime enabled for that dataset?

 

[xviruz]

Ah ha, that's what it was. atime was enabled by default and now it is disabled. :)