SOLVED Why is this one drive so hyperactive?

[o0o]

Hi,

I wonder, why this one disc is so active all the time...
As you can see in the attached screenshot, my ada7 is busy all the time. All the other drives show no activity.
ada7 is a single disc pool, the other (visible) drives are together in one pool. Another disc also is a single pool, but shows no activity. All pools are shared over SMB. Settings are all the same for each drive.

Why is this one drive so hyperactive?

Thanks for any hints.
(I'm new to TrueNAS, please be gentle :])

 

[Samuel Tai]

Is the single-disc pool containing ada7 the one where you placed the system dataset?

 

[o0o]

Thanks for the quick reply!
No, system data set is on ada4. Sorry for mentioning. There is "some" activity too. But it doesnt look as the pattern of ada7.

 

[Samuel Tai]

You may be confusing the boot pool with the system dataset. I'm referring to System->System Dataset, which has to be set on a pool.

Also, what shares do you have defined on ada7?

 

[o0o]

Ahhh, you are right. I thought boot and system is automatically on the same drive. I didn't set up ada7 as system dataset. Can I simply change it to one of the other options at System->System Dataset? "boot-pool" is the only SSD in the system. Is it ok to choose this?
Do I need to do some preparation bevor moving the system dataset?

I only have one data set on ada7 and it's and Samba share.

 

[Samuel Tai]

It's not recommended to have the system dataset on the boot pool. It should be on the pool with the greatest redundancy, to have the lowest risk of system database corruption.

As for the disk activity on ada7, what exactly are you sharing out, and which client is connected to the share?

 

[sretalla]

It's not recommended to have the system dataset on the boot pool. It should be on the pool with the greatest redundancy, to have the lowest risk of system database corruption.

I can see the wisdom of that statement in the context of a USB stick as the boot pool, but if we're comparing a single-disk striped pool on HDD vs boot pool on SSD, I don't see why we wouldn't recommend moving the system dataset back to the boot pool (there's no difference in terms of redundancy there and the system dataset having access to more IOPS can't be a bad thing).

 

[o0o]

Thanks for your replies.

@sretalla is right. In terms of redundancy there is no difference between my single disc stripe pool and the boot pool.
Why does it need the most high redundancy? Is the system dataset somehow vulnerable and needs to be restored often?
Or is there a reason, why boot and system datasets shouldn''t be on the same drive?

How do I move it anyway? Simply select the destination pool and that's it?

@Samuel Tai: ada7 is a simple backup drive for some data on my main work station. It is one of three drives (in different locations) with the same data. Once per day on my main workstation robocopy is performing an incremental backup to all of these drives (at different times). So, nothing is reading or writing on ada7, except robocopy or if I would open ada7 as a network drive on my workstation. (All pools (except boot) are connected as network drives to the workstation. So there is no difference between the drives.

 

[sretalla]

How do I move it anyway? Simply select the destination pool and that's it?

Yes, that's it.

 

[o0o]

I moved the system dataset away from HDD ada7 - and all the hyperactivity on this disk is gone. Perfect.
Thanks for your help!