Hello!

I have a slightly annoying issue. Before I go into the issue let me explain what I do that seems to cause the issue.

One of the things I use Plex for is “watching” media while going to sleep. That way it can play long without using any internet. Plex eventually will time out the playback basically asking if your still watching by not autoplaying the next episode. Once this happens my Apple TV will then eventually go to sleep on it’s own. Whenever it is next that I turn on the Apple TV Plex will still be open but on the Plex home menu just as if you have just opened the app. At this exact moment the disk on the NAS that holds the last media file played will spin up, but nothing is actually accessed (File Activity and Active stream shows no activity) even if you don’t interact with the plex app at all and close it to do something else that disk still got spun up for no reason that I can tell…

So the issue that may be entirely a Plex issue is that when waking the Apple TV to the plex app a disk on the NAS gets randomly spin up. Whats also interesting is that browsing media does not in any way spin up disks, only when media begins playback and this issue do any disks spin up. (Well and scanning media, that I have set to manual) The only thing I can think of is that Plex for a split second when it starts back up on the Apple TV thinks it’s trying to play the last media it played, but before the disk actually finishes spinning up Plex decides it isn’t so nothing is read…

Any ideas on what could be done?

This is one of the times I really do wish that Unraid had a legitimate READ cache. (As in another copy, not a move, of the data is stored somewhere else like an SSD or a RAM disk)

I do know of that one plugin the moves the video file to the cache while plex has it open, but I don’t know if this would even work for my issue, nor do I want it to be a move, just a copy, AKA READ Cache…

Also it should be noted that Plex only has read only access to my media storage. And all other files related to Plex are on my redundant SSD cache.

I entirely understand that this is probably a Plex issue not an Unraid one.

Well plex might be keeping the disk away for another reason other than you left your appletv open since I do not believe plex reads the next episode ahead of time.

I can confidently say that plex does not spin disks up when broswing media due to it just reading it's databse or wahtever which resides in the appdata folder. basically all that info is cached somewhere else probably not on one of your HDDs.

I do not experience disk spin up with my appletv and plex like you seem to be.

Please attach your diagnostics.zip in the reply to this comment.

Do you by chance store any other data along side the actual media file? Posters or Subtitles?

9 hours ago, MowMdown said:

I can confidently say that plex does not spin disks up when broswing media due to it just reading it's databse or wahtever which resides in the appdata folder. basically all that info is cached somewhere else probably not on one of your HDDs.

Yes, same here, browsing does not spin up the disk, only when starting media and this “bug” does.

9 hours ago, MowMdown said:

Please attach your diagnostics.zip in the reply to this comment.

Here.

9 hours ago, MowMdown said:

Do you by chance store any other data along side the actual media file? Posters or Subtitles?

Nope, just media files, cover art is embedded into the media files, subtitles and the like as well. No “Optimized Versions” of media either, though if I were to have such I would have them in there own share. I have been burned in the past by the likes of Plex and Jellyfin corrupting or deleting media files in the past, so my media share is read only.

I do suspect this is a plex bug. I have done a random experiment in the past where when I got up I just power cut the Apple TV without waking it and it did not spin up the disk on the NAS on wake.

e3l1-unraid-diagnostics-20250614-1710.zip

Edited June 15, 20251 yr by ETHREAL1

Can you tell me why your "System" share is located on your disks and not your cache pool? what files do you have within that share?

system shareUseCache="no" # Share exists on disk1, disk2

I suspect your docker.img vDisk is located within this share and that will keep the disks awake.

Edit: It sure is: DOCKER_IMAGE_FILE="/mnt/user/system/docker/docker.img"

Edited June 15, 20251 yr by MowMdown

Just now, MowMdown said:

Can you tell me why your "System" share is located on your disks and not your cache pool? what files do you have within that share?

From what I was reading while researching what is stored where by default that is the storage location for VM templates and Docker images. And is only accessed when making a VM from a template, Starting a docker (once started it’s no longer accessed) and when updating/adding Docker images.

Am I wrong? I have not noticed any random disk spinning up having it on the array VS the cache.

Basically docker.img is where the containers run from, this will keep the HDDs awake while docker service is active.

Stop both the docker service and VM service if enabled, set your system share to use cache and array (both is required for mover to run) then set mover action "Array -> Cache" run mover.

Edited June 15, 20251 yr by MowMdown

Just now, MowMdown said:

Basically docker.img is where the conatiners run from, this will keep the HDDs awake while docker service is active.

Not from what I have seen, I have had disks not spin up for days when I have not used plex or the like (with it still running in the background of course)

But I will move it over, but don’t think it will change my issue, I believe I tried this in the past.

Well im still not quite sure what the actual issue is but I do know docker.img being on an HDD isn't helping and will keep disks awake and I see in your syslog the disk constantly spinning up.

You can type in lsof /mnt/diskX and replace X with the disk# and see what files are being accessed.

On 6/14/2025 at 6:20 PM, MowMdown said:

docker.img being on an HDD isn't helping

It would seem that this was the issue, guess it’s some quark specific with the ATV Plex accessing the server and it needing to read something from the docker.img file. Is odd that it only happens with the ATV though…

On 6/14/2025 at 6:22 PM, MowMdown said:

You can type in lsof /mnt/diskX and replace X with the disk# and see what files are being accessed.

This command does nothing by the way, I run it in the Unraid terminal and it just does not return anything ever, even while I’m deliberately coping a multi GB file via SMB.

If you get no results from running lsof /mnt/disk1(for example) then you have no files open on the disk. That's a good sign.

Here's an example of what it might look like if there is file activity.

Edited June 17, 20251 yr by MowMdown