ReadyNAS 104 Constant Activity from Mac OS

Wondering if anyone has any suggestions on a problem I'm seeing. I have several Macs across my intranet (all gigabit with cat 6 cabling); two of them typically talk to my ReadyNAS 104. One is a Mac Mini running Plex as a home theater machine and running El Capitan (10.11.5), the other is a 2015 iMac running the current beta of Sierra (10.12.5). I'm using AFP to connect to the NAS from both machines.

As soon as I open a Finder window to show the contents, the NAS goes into super-hyperactive mode, with constant activity. The NAS is physically right next to me; I can hear the drives accessing constantly. The activity continues for as long as I have the Finder window open; I've had a window open in the background for about ten minutes now and the drives haven't stopped once. The instant I close the Finder window, the NAS drives stop and return to a more idle state. Mind you, I haven't actually disconnected from the NAS; just closing the Finder window lets the drives return to idle. If I open the window back up, the drives start accessing again as they did before, and stop again when I close the window. While the drives are accessing this way, data transfer is super slow.

I see the same behavior on both my iMac and the Mac Mini--open a Finder window and the drives go crazy. But Plex Media Server (which I have running on the Mini, not on the NAS) is constantly able to pull data from the NAS without a peep. I thought it might be OSX's Spotlight trying to index the drive, but I've added the share to Spotlight's privacy list to prevent that. I also thought it might be Finder's "Cover Flow" mode trying to draw thumbnails of the files, but it happens even if I'm in plain old "List" view.

The NAS is running firmware 6.6.1 and has four WD 3TB Reds that are about 22 months old. It's about 78% full (1.84TB free, 8.17TB total) and the two Ethernet ports are bonded.

Anyone have any good leads on what's causing my Macs to beat on the drives so hard? TIA!

Performance

Using with Mac OSX

benscripps
Apr 25, 2017
So I think I have it figured out now. In the past, I've specifically added the share to my "Privacy" list in Spotlight's preferences to prevent it from being indexed. For whatever reason, OS X is forgetting that I've added it to the list of exclusions, so when I mount the share, Spotlight starts indexing it. Sometimes, as soon as I drag the icon for the share into Spotlight's "Privacy" list, the activity on the ReadyNAS stops; other times it doesn't, but Spotlight's "Privacy" list definitely always forgets that I've excluded that share as soon as the share is ejected, so the next time I mount the share, Spotlight starts indexing it again. I think it's connected to the issue reported here:

https://community.netgear.com/t5/Using-your-ReadyNAS/Spotlight/m-p/931074#M70357

...where Spotlight is trying to reindex the share every time it's mounted.

I'm going to file this as a bug with Apple in the hopes they can get Spotlight to behave better.

Thanks again for your help!

7 Replies

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JennC
NETGEAR Employee Retired
Apr 18, 2017
Hello benscripps,

Do you have any backup job and apps running on the ReadyNAS?

Welcome to the community!

Regards,
- benscripps
  Aspirant
  Apr 18, 2017
  Hi Jenn--
  
  I don't have any apps running on the ReadyNAS (that includes the anti-virus). The only backup jobs are the snapshots that it does on its own.
  
  I have disk tests and balancing running once per week on Saturday and Sunday respectively, and defrag running once a month, but the behavior I'm seeing happens outside of those times. I have Spotlight enabled on the Mac, but the ReadyNAS is included in its "Privacy" list of folders and volumes to ignore, and Time Machine has a dedicated external HD and doesn't talk to the ReadyNAS.
  
  The high level of activity is directly timed to the opening of a Finder window on a connected machine; as soon as I open the window, it starts accessing, and as soon as I close it, it stops like clockwork.
  
  Thanks!
  
  -Ben
- JennC
  NETGEAR Employee Retired
  Apr 19, 2017
  
  Hello benscripps,
  
  Does this happen when opening a specific share on the ReadyNAS or it happens as soon as you map the NAS and before selecting a share? Which file protocol do you use on finder by the way?
  
  If you have some old snapshots that you no longer need, maybe you want to delete them too.
  
  Regards,
  - benscripps
    Aspirant
    Apr 20, 2017
    It's after mapping the share; it's only when the Mac OS Finder is displaying a window showing the contents of the share. If the share is mounted but its contents aren't visible in any Finder windows, there's no activity. And I'm connecting using AFP; I tried with SMB and didn't see the activity, but SMB isn't really an option for my setup.
    
    But...my initial assumption was that, since the problem was only happening when Finder was displaying the files, it might have been an issue with OS X itself and how it was accessing the drive. Prior to posting here, I filed it a couple weeks ago as a bug report with Apple's beta program on the off chance that it actually was something in the OS. This morning, there was a new beta build (10.12.5 beta 3 build 16F60a); after installing that, I'm not seeing the issue any more. There's still activity when I open a window, but only for a few seconds, well within what I might expect normally. There aren't any release notes with the new build, so I can't tell for certain, but I'm crossing my fingers that this is now resolved.
    
    Thanks again for your help!