This post is really for reference for others who are wondering why their disks are spinning up (not asking for support).

 

Something to be aware of, clicking around the Unraid UI actually causes reads of the array in unexpected ways (spinning up the array drives), I have found this though using the also great "File Activity" plugin (Thank you @dlandon !)

 

Clicking to view the DASHBOARD page (if not recently visited) or the "VMS" page (if not recently visited) causes reads on the "iso" and "img" files attached to those stopped VMs.

 

Sample output seen in File Activity logs from clicking to see "VMS" page:

 

** Disk 1 **
Oct 01 23:14:32 OPEN => /mnt/disk1/isos/virtio-win-0.1.208-1.iso
Oct 01 23:14:32 OPEN => /mnt/disk1/isos/Win11_English_x64v1.iso
Oct 01 23:14:32 OPEN => /mnt/disk1/isos/virtio-win-0.1.208-1.iso

** Disk 6 **
Oct 01 23:14:32 OPEN => /mnt/disk6/domains/Windows 11/vdisk1.img

Yes, I could move those to cache, but they are so rarely used they live on the array.

 

I suppose the for Unraid developers a question is:

 

Is reading the disk (those files attached to the stopped VMs) really needed when visiting the "DASHBOARD" and "VMS" pages?

 

(and then, does it do this without plugins installed, is it just a plugin fault)

 

Plugins installed (for reference)

appdata.backup.plg - 2023.09.27  (Up to date)
ca.mover.tuning.plg - 2023.08.22  (Up to date)
community.applications.plg - 2023.09.30  (Up to date)
dynamix.active.streams.plg - 2023.02.19  (Up to date)
dynamix.cache.dirs.plg - 2023.02.19  (Up to date)
dynamix.file.manager.plg - 2023.06.01  (Up to date)
file.activity.plg - 2023.09.13  (Up to date)
fix.common.problems.plg - 2023.09.30  (Up to date)
libvirtwol.plg - 2020.04.29  (Up to date)
NerdTools.plg - 2023.08.09  (Up to date)
open.files.plg - 2023.06.12  (Up to date)
parity.check.tuning.plg - 2023.09.13  (Up to date)
sas-spindown.plg - 2022.08.02  (Up to date)
tips.and.tweaks.plg - 2023.07.23  (Up to date)
unassigned.devices.plg - 2023.09.30  (Up to date)
unassigned.devices-plus.plg - 2023.08.14  (Up to date)
unbalance.plg - v2021.04.21  (Up to date)
unRAIDServer.plg - 6.12.4
user.scripts.plg - 2023.09.30  (Up to date)

 

Anyway, I hope this post quiets the crazy in someone's head about getting the disk spinning to stop.

 

 

Check out this thread, same issue you are describing and solution -