External drive always running

Question

The LEDs on an external drive (TerraMaster D2-310 RAID1) indicate that it is
being read continuously, although Performance Monitor shows no read (or write)
operations on that virtual drive. How can this be? If a drive is being read by
a system service, will it show up in Performance Monitor? I have disabled my
BitDefender virus scan, so I don't believe that is the culprit.

Answer 1

It seems Dell Tech Support may have been blowing smoke. The REAL problem turns out to be Western Digital's WD Drive Utilities. I had installed that application and its associated services some time ago, thinking it was pretty benign. Uninstalling this app caused the problem to go away. Why an app intended to help manage WD drives finds it necessary to hammer a TerraMaster DAS with Seagate drives is beyond my comprehension.

Thanks, Igor, for the pointer to ProcMon. Though it took me some time to understand what I was seeing, ProcMon provided the essential bit of evidence pointing to WD Drive Utilities.

Answer 2

Thanks for the pointer to fsutil, Igor, but both Process Monitor and fsutil indicate no activity on the RAID (drive Z:). Specifically, fsutil indicates all statistics are identical after 2 minutes. Meanwhile, the drive is churning away...

fsutil fsinfo statistics z:	fsutil fsinfo statistics z:
5:21:19 PM	5:23:13 PM
File System Type :	NTFS	File System Type :	NTFS
UserFileReads :	1500	UserFileReads :	1500	Match
UserFileReadBytes :	90394624	UserFileReadBytes :	90394624	Match
UserDiskReads :	1512	UserDiskReads :	1512	Match

. . .

LogFileWriteBytes :	1564672	LogFileWriteBytes :	1564672	Match
LogFileFull :	0	LogFileFull :	0	Match
DiskResourceFailure :	0	DiskResourceFailure :	0	Match

Answer 3

You may use Process monitor, set filer to this disk and check the operations. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/...

Or use

fsutil fsinfo statistics d:

command twice and compare data to see if the system made some operations.

Answer 4

>> May be RAID verifies its data.

Thanks, Igor, for that idea. That was my first thought. TerraMaster has been very responsive to my inquiries along those lines. However, they have not identified any such background activity. Furthermore the pattern of LED activity I am seeing is specifically identified in the D2-310's User Manual as being associated with read operations - that is, drive one's LED is flashing green, while the drive two's LED is steady green. This is consistent with the idea that in a RAID1 set, a read operation only needs to access one drive. Since the second drive has identical data, there is no reason to access it when reading the set.

Answer 5

Hi Austin,

My name is Igor, it's a pleasure for me to help others and I'll do all my best to help you.

It would be better to ask manufacturer's support for a clarification. May be RAID verifies its data.