Phorte Posted January 4, 2019 Share Posted January 4, 2019 Hi all, Long time user (since 2010) with a fairly simple setup (1x parity + 5 disks & no cache drive) - v6.6.5. Today I made some changes: Moved everything off one of the disks Unmounted it Re-assigned it as a cache drive Set apps, appdata, docker and my downloads folder to prefer the cache drive Everything went smoothly. The only docker I had installed was sabnzbd. So I did a few more updates and put on Community Applications then reinstalled sabnzbd as well as installed Transmission. I am now finding that I'm getting random writes to my USB flash drive. I've always been conscious of any writes to the flash drive as I remember reading that excessive writes to it will cause wear overtime (and with the license being tied to the drive, obviously something I want to avoid causing). Prior to today's updates, I never got any writes to the flash drive. After I get some random write to the flash drive, I check the logs (via the top right button in the GUI) and there isn't any new entry in there that tells me why something has been written to the drive. What should I be looking for to determine why I'm getting random writes to the USB drive? Thanks in advance. Link to comment
Frank1940 Posted January 4, 2019 Share Posted January 4, 2019 What do you mean by "random writes"? How long has your server been up and how many writes have occurred on that period of time? Excessive writing will cause wear that could shorten flash drive life but data does have to be written there. By the way, replacing a defective flash drive is now a relatively simple matter now. LimeTech has an automated procedure set up for that that lets you to move your license to a new flash drive once a year. If sometime happens that you would require an second one, they have been quite accommodating after an E-mail exchange. Link to comment
Squid Posted January 4, 2019 Share Posted January 4, 2019 Any change to a setting will cause a write to the flash drive. Any docker app install / edit will cause a write to the flash drive. Fix Common Problems (if installed, and running on a schedule) will cause a very small write to the flash drive (to check its integrity) The accumulation of these writes will probably shorten the lifespan of your flash drive by about 5 minutes over its lifetime. (And I'm still using my original flash drive from 2012 with no problems) Link to comment
Phorte Posted January 4, 2019 Author Share Posted January 4, 2019 11 minutes ago, Squid said: Any change to a setting will cause a write to the flash drive. Any docker app install / edit will cause a write to the flash drive. Fix Common Problems (if installed, and running on a schedule) will cause a very small write to the flash drive (to check its integrity) No changes to docker configurations are being done when these writes occur. Only sabnzbd and transmission are installed and they're all configured to the cache drive. 1 hour ago, Frank1940 said: What do you mean by "random writes"? How long has your server been up and how many writes have occurred on that period of time? Random Writes - the writes column in the "Main" tab of the GUI is increasing.. it's small increments. But it's increasing nonetheless irrespective of what is being done. I could be read/writing to the array, or I could be downloading something with sabnzbd to cache. All random and no pattern. The server has currently been up for just 2hrs and the writes column for the flash drive is at 40. Small, yes, but I can't imagine what would've written to flash drive during this time. Good to know that replacing a drive is a simple process now. Either way, I'm trying to troubleshoot these writes so I can get to their root cause. Link to comment
Phorte Posted January 4, 2019 Author Share Posted January 4, 2019 I've noticed my RAM consumption is quite high since updating installing CA and updating the dockers. Could this lead to random writes to the USB drive? Link to comment
Frank1940 Posted January 4, 2019 Share Posted January 4, 2019 Just checked both of mine. The Test Bed has 65 writes in 18 days and the Media server has 219 writes in 30 days. After a reboot, I would expect to see a series of writes as a result of the boot process doing a bit of house cleaning. I would suggest tracking it for a week or two. Link to comment
Phorte Posted January 4, 2019 Author Share Posted January 4, 2019 Even after a reboot and letting the system sit there idle for a while, I have a habit of clearing the statistics just so I can monitor the writes... Are there any more indepth logs I can access that can tell me what is being written? For example just in the last 5mins, I cleared the stats and the only activity in unRAID is: I'm READING data from the array. Nothing else. No writing. The dockers aren't functioning - nothing. And the USB drive write counter just ticked over to 14. I open up the logs (via the GUI button) and the last entry is my clearing of the stats. Nothing afterwards... Reads also jumped to 220. I don't expect anything to be read from the USB at this moment either. Link to comment
Squid Posted January 4, 2019 Share Posted January 4, 2019 6 minutes ago, Phorte said: Reads also jumped to 220 Reads can and will happen at anytime. To be honest, I wouldn't worry about the flash drive usage. When you hear things about excessive writes, its talking about say having your docker.img file on it or the vdisk for a VM, etc. Link to comment
Phorte Posted January 4, 2019 Author Share Posted January 4, 2019 I do understand that... and I admit I'm being pedantic about it. But it would be nice to get to the root of it Just now, as a test, I've manually spun down all disks (including cache). Nothing is running in either docker. Refreshed the main window a few times and I've just gotten some writes to the drive (albeit 7). Link to comment
Squid Posted January 4, 2019 Share Posted January 4, 2019 I'm not even sure how accurate the values are. Same reason why if you (from a fresh boot) run a parity check you may see wildly differing values on the reads for each hard drive. Link to comment
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