Hard Drive Access every 5 Seconds or so

[mdabs]

Hello,

First time poster here, and I did search the forums but could not find a thread with the same problem I'm seeing. I put together a FreeNAS system a few weeks ago using 6 WD Red drives. Overall, I really enjoy it and use it as a Plex Media Server as well as for Time Machine backups and general storage. However, I can't figure one thing out. Every 5 seconds or so my hard drive access light turns on for about 1/4 second, and I can hear the hard drives softly click as they either access or write some sort of data. I'm trying to stop this to limit wear on my drives, and set up the .system file to write to solid state media, but it still happens. Below is my configuration. Any advice on stopping this frequent access on my drives would be appreciated.

Hardware:
Motherboard: E3C226D2I
CPU: Intel Pentium G3250
Memory: 8 Gb Crucial ECC

 

[enemy85]

Did you put ur jails dataset on the ssd too?

 

[gpsguy]

We don't know how big those "6 WD Red drives" are, but you'll probably need additional RAM. 8GB is the minimum required, just to run FreeNAS.

Memory: 8 Gb Crucial ECC

 

[joeschmuck]

If you are concerned about the head load cycle count then you should look at the SMART data for your drives and see if the count is growing quickly. Also as mentioned above, if your jails are on your hard drive (they likely are) this will keep your hard drives active. If needed you may be required to change the head parking timer. Just post your SMART data for one of your hard drives for say now and then 1 or 2 hours later so we can see what the count looks like. I myself disabled my head parking timer and have been running them for over 3 years now without any failure.

 

[danb35]

@joeschmuck, I doubt the concern is load cycle count--just the typical (and entirely unjustified) concern that actually using disks that are designed to be run 24x7x365 will cause them to wear out quickly. If he's using Red disks, the load cycle count shouldn't be a concern.

@mdabs, your drives are designed to be used. There's no evidence that accessing them periodically will cause them to wear out faster, and what evidence there is suggests that letting them spin is better for them than spinning up and down constantly.

 

[mdabs]

Did you put ur jails dataset on the ssd too?

This fixed it. Thanks!