Hi everyone, I have been trying to troubleshoot this issue for 2 weeks and have not been able to find a forum page that describes the same issue:

My Mac Mini is connected to my UNRAID NAS via a 10G direct connect with its own subnetwork/IP. The Direct Connection is not an issue for any of my volumes on the Array and Cache / Pool drives.
-> X550 NIC on NAS - Unraid 7.1.4 - UD plugin up-to-date
-> Mac Mini - OS 15.7.2 (2018, max specs, last intel model, built in 10G port)

THE PROBLEM: I have 3x drives (outside the array) in Unassigned Disk Devices, each with their own volume. They mount perfectly during every boot up of the Mac Mini, but when those drives spin down in Unassigned Devices, the volumes disappear from the desktop (as an active folder that I can open). When I attempt to remount them, the "connect to server" window has the volumes greyed out (as if they were mounted). When I try to browse them via the server location in finder windows, the volumes appear to be mounted but do not display the internal content. Even when the drives spin up again, the Mac Mini cannot see into the volume.
Ideally, I would like the volumes to not unmount/dissappear from finder, just like the other volumes from the Array and Pool.

I am attaching some screenshots. As you can see:
"mini-net" volume has no issues (part of the Pool Devices)
"minihdd8tb1d", "minihdd8tb2d", "minihdd8tb3d" are volumes from the Unassigned Disk Devices.


I thank you in advance!

Edited December 2, 2025Dec 2 by nasforthemass
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I still haven't found a solution that allows the drives to spin down while still being accessible. Still hoping someone has an answer for this.
Is the answer that these drives need to be in separate pools outside of the main Array and outside of Unassigned Disks?

in case someone else is on the same boat as me, I am temporarily solving this issue by not letting the drives spin-down and having them pinged intermittently via a user script that runs every 5 mins:

User script created with some vibe coding assistance, click to view script

#!/bin/bash

################################################################################

# ENHANCED: KEEP UD DRIVES MOUNTED + PREVENT SPINDOWN + SMART SMB REFRESH

# Fully compatible with Unraid 7.x

# Includes:

# - Logging to syslog

# - Mountpoint sanitation

# - Conditional Samba refresh (only when needed)

# - Filesystem-type validation

# - Anti-ghost share protection for macOS

################################################################################

# --- YOUR UNASSIGNED DEVICES (whole-disk FS, no partition numbers) ---

DRIVES=(

"/dev/sde"

"/dev/sdl"

"/dev/sdn"

)

INTERVAL=300 # seconds (5 minutes)

LOG_TAG="UD-Keepalive"

# Function: log to syslog

log() {

logger -t "$LOG_TAG" "$1"

echo "$(date): $1"

}

# Function: safely reload Samba only if needed

refresh_samba_if_needed() {

# Check if smb.conf changed or active exports changed

local exports_dir="/etc/samba/unassigned-shares"

if [ ! -d "$exports_dir" ]; then

log "WARNING: SMB UD exports directory missing: $exports_dir"

return

fi

# Hash current export config

local current_hash=$(find "$exports_dir" -type f -exec md5sum {} \; | md5sum | awk '{print $1}')

# If no previous hash, store it and skip reload this cycle

if [ -z "$PREVIOUS_EXPORT_HASH" ]; then

PREVIOUS_EXPORT_HASH="$current_hash"

log "Initial SMB export hash created."

return

fi

# Compare with previous hash

if [ "$current_hash" != "$PREVIOUS_EXPORT_HASH" ]; then

log "SMB export config changed — reloading Samba."

if [ -x /etc/rc.d/rc.samba ]; then

/etc/rc.d/rc.samba reload

else

log "ERROR: Samba script not found at /etc/rc.d/rc.samba"

fi

PREVIOUS_EXPORT_HASH="$current_hash"

fi

}

# MAIN LOOP

while true; do

for DRIVE in "${DRIVES[@]}"; do

# 1. MAKE SURE DRIVE IS MOUNTED

if ! mount | grep -q "$DRIVE"; then

log "$DRIVE is unmounted — attempting remount."

/usr/local/sbin/rc.unassigned mount "$DRIVE"

sleep 2

fi

# 2. GET AND SANITIZE MOUNTPOINT

RAW_MOUNTPOINT=$(lsblk -no MOUNTPOINT "$DRIVE" 2>/dev/null)

MOUNTPOINT=$(echo "$RAW_MOUNTPOINT" | tr -d '[:space:]')

if [ -z "$MOUNTPOINT" ] || [ ! -d "$MOUNTPOINT" ]; then

log "WARNING: Invalid mountpoint for $DRIVE ('$RAW_MOUNTPOINT')"

continue

fi

# 3. VERIFY FILESYSTEM TYPE

FSTYPE=$(lsblk -no FSTYPE "$DRIVE" | tr -d '[:space:]')

if [ -z "$FSTYPE" ]; then

log "WARNING: Could not detect filesystem type for $DRIVE."

continue

fi

# 4. KEEP-ALIVE TOUCH TO PREVENT SPINDOWN

KEEPALIVE="$MOUNTPOINT/.keepalive"

touch "$KEEPALIVE"

if [ $? -ne 0 ]; then

log "ERROR: Failed to write .keepalive to $MOUNTPOINT"

fi

# 5. EXTRA PROTECTION: DETECT DEAD/GHOST MOUNTS

if ! ls "$MOUNTPOINT" >/dev/null 2>&1; then

log "WARNING: $DRIVE mount appears unresponsive — remounting."

/usr/local/sbin/rc.unassigned umount "$DRIVE"

sleep 1

/usr/local/sbin/rc.unassigned mount "$DRIVE"

sleep 2

fi

done

# 6. SMART SAMBA REFRESH (only when exports change)

refresh_samba_if_needed

sleep "$INTERVAL"

done

Edited December 4, 2025Dec 4 by nasforthemass
spelling