Constant disk activity

[nero78]

The conditions of the video:

1. all apps are disabled on the NAS.
2. pulled the network cord so no network connection
3. system is on and all disks are active as in they are spinning
....

Ok, let's focus on the condition of your recorded video. We have the same disks as yours. I'll ask our DQE to setup the condition exactly the same as yours to see what it is. Will update it soon here.

Hello nero78,

There are a few progresses. Our WD Red disks (the same model) are very quiet. We hardly hear the tick sound even when disk is reading / writing. So we change to Hitachi 3TB disk (HUS724030ALA640). We can hear the tick sound pretty clear on this model when we access it. Now, we can hear something with your condition (no LAN, no HDD hibernation, system idle) in our lab. Our RD is now investigating it. It might take time to have a result.

Thanks that you can put efforts to report this issue. It really takes a long route.

Thank you, but one thing bother me. You say you have a hard time hearing the disks. Is there something wrong with my NAS cabinet? Because the disks are resonating in the metal of the NAS and as you hear in the video, make a LOT of noise! That is exactly why i did hang my HDD's in a rubber band when i had those in my desktop computer. Now a days the HDD trays come with various rubber fits to make the noise softer...

[elfidge]

Thanks John, I just did as you asked and the CSV generated has just this content:

"No processes that continually access hard disks were detected."

So I don't think that'll be very much help (!)

My disk models are all Sandisk X400 1TB (SanDisk SD8SB8U1T001122 as far as ADM is concerned)

Sounds very clear. You disks are SSD which don't have spin-down mode (there is no motor inside). I believe the SSD disk simply skips the sleep timer command. The idle state (when no accesses) should be similar to normal 3.5" HDD spin-down mode. The power consumption should be low enough. How do you think?

Without a power clamp to monitor draw it's very difficult to ascertain. I assumed that SSDs would support all power states that all other SATA devices do, but perhaps that is not the case.

One really useful feature would be the ability to monitor power consumption. This is hardware dependent, but as there are methods of doing this in Linux, would it be possible to get that info on the Asustor units? And if so can this go in to the roadmap for ADM please?

[John@AST]

Thank you, but one thing bother me. You say you have a hard time hearing the disks. Is there something wrong with my NAS cabinet? Because the disks are resonating in the metal of the NAS and as you hear in the video, make a LOT of noise! That is exactly why i did hang my HDD's in a rubber band when i had those in my desktop computer. Now a days the HDD trays come with various rubber fits to make the noise softer...

I don't think it's related to cabinet. The sound on your video should come from HDD. However rubber might be able to absorb certain vibration. Our trays actually equip some plastic parts that can do similar thing (compared to other pure metal tray). We did all of vibration tests for each model. Our system performs very good. You don't need to worry about it. However we cannot take care of HDD working noise.

We don't know what are differences between your HDD and ours, although the model is the same.

[John@AST]

Without a power clamp to monitor draw it's very difficult to ascertain. I assumed that SSDs would support all power states that all other SATA devices do, but perhaps that is not the case.

One really useful feature would be the ability to monitor power consumption. This is hardware dependent, but as there are methods of doing this in Linux, would it be possible to get that info on the Asustor units? And if so can this go in to the roadmap for ADM please?

Thanks for the suggestion. We do measure power consumption during product design stage. However, it only covers certain conditions, for example, normal working, disk hibernation, system idle, heavy load, EuP, ...etc. Currently our system cannot monitor power consumption dynamically. As I know, there is a small equipment that can do the thing. It looks like a AC plug, but a little larger. You might be able to consider the equipment first.

[nero78]

I have downloaded the new FW update (2.6.1) and ran diagnostic tool.

NOTHING! Completely empty list... This is with all apps turned off.

[John@AST]

I have downloaded the new FW update (2.6.1) and ran diagnostic tool.

NOTHING! Completely empty list... This is with all apps turned off.

Hello nero78,

That's right. There are no disk activities. So HDD will go to standby mode after disk hibernation timer expired.

For your case (no disk hibernation setup), we found the tick sound is caused by a task to get HDD temperature. It's a necessary task: our system will monitor HDD temperature to adjust FAN speed. Although there are no physical disk accesses (it won't block disk hibernation), it seems HDD does something. Our RD is still investigating this issue now.

[John@AST]

Hello nero78,
After we did some experiments, here is the result:

• Set "Disk Hibernation" to never.
• No active applications.
• Your disk (WD Red) generates tick-sound periodically.

Basically it's caused by a task to read HDD temperature periodically. The task issue a disk SMART command to get the temperature. The command will result in certain HDD to do seek action. This behavior (seek) varies from HDD vendors. And we need this task to make sure system FAN being working correctly. So we cannot turn this task off.

We'll recommend 2 possible workaround ways:

• Enable "Disk Hibernation" and set to a proper period. In case that there are no more active jobs to access disks, disk will go into standby mode. In this mode, there are no more tick-sounds.
• Set schedule to power NAS off (or sleep) at night, and power NAS on in the morning. By this way, you can keep NAS very quiet at night even if there are active jobs all the time.

[nero78]

Hello nero78,
After we did some experiments, here is the result:

• Set "Disk Hibernation" to never.
• No active applications.
• Your disk (WD Red) generates tick-sound periodically.

Basically it's caused by a task to read HDD temperature periodically. The task issue a disk SMART command to get the temperature. The command will result in certain HDD to do seek action. This behavior (seek) varies from HDD vendors. And we need this task to make sure system FAN being working correctly. So we cannot turn this task off.

We'll recommend 2 possible workaround ways:

• Enable "Disk Hibernation" and set to a proper period. In case that there are no more active jobs to access disks, disk will go into standby mode. In this mode, there are no more tick-sounds.
• Set schedule to power NAS off (or sleep) at night, and power NAS on in the morning. By this way, you can keep NAS very quiet at night even if there are active jobs all the time.

Ok thank you for your work and that you found the issue!

It seems that this NAS and my disks are not compatible. This is a NAS that also is markeded to be in the living room under the TV (because of HDMI and IR support). If I were to have the NAS in my living room, I would go insane because of the disks ALWAYS ticking. I have been working as IT technician and IT consultant for 20+ years and never had this annoying issue (yes i had loud disks, but they keep silent when they are not used).

Also your solution to keep the NAS off is just not how a NAS is supposed to operate. My qnap is silent when not downloading or using plex and therefore I can have it on at all times. My asustor NAS will never go into disk hibernation unless I turn off ALL apps (my qnap spins down with apps on...), so hibernation is also not an option.

To schedule on and off is either not an option, because I don't know when I'm going to bed and can sleep longer (because of flexible work schedule)

I want to return this NAS and get the 4-bay Qnap instead, bacuse I cannot have an expensive NAS that have to have workarounds and stay off half the day. How can I proceed with that? I bet my shop won't take it back now that it is a couple of months old...

[John@AST]

Ok thank you for your work and that you found the issue!

It seems that this NAS and my disks are not compatible. This is a NAS that also is markeded to be in the living room under the TV (because of HDMI and IR support). If I were to have the NAS in my living room, I would go insane because of the disks ALWAYS ticking. I have been working as IT technician and IT consultant for 20+ years and never had this annoying issue (yes i had loud disks, but they keep silent when they are not used).

Also your solution to keep the NAS off is just not how a NAS is supposed to operate. My qnap is silent when not downloading or using plex and therefore I can have it on at all times. My asustor NAS will never go into disk hibernation unless I turn off ALL apps (my qnap spins down with apps on...), so hibernation is also not an option.

To schedule on and off is either not an option, because I don't know when I'm going to bed and can sleep longer (because of flexible work schedule)

I want to return this NAS and get the 4-bay Qnap instead, bacuse I cannot have an expensive NAS that have to have workarounds and stay off half the day. How can I proceed with that? I bet my shop won't take it back now that it is a couple of months old...

Hello nero78,
We actually tested many brands of NAS. QNAP is one of them. All of NAS perform the same, i.e., you can hear the tick sounds when NAS reads disk temperature (with the same model of HDD). That's the behavior of HDD (varies from different vendors) which we cannot control.

You just mentioned another condition: set disk hibernation enabled. We focused on the condition you mentioned before (no disk hibernation). Can you help to give us more detailed information about it?

[elfidge]

Has anyone else noticed that this issue seems to apply to external USB disks also?
The previous AS302T would drop the WD 2TB disk I had in to standby after the specified period, whereas the 3TB I have never spins down in the AS6204T.
This is a magnetic disk, so I would fully expect it to drop in to standby and spin down.