Hard drives keep waking up even when nobody is using the NAS. Is this normal?

General Discussion
1

I have a DXP4800 with WD Red 8TB drives. It’s a brand new installation and I have no remote access and no scheduled jobs.
I’ve noticed that every so often all three hard drives wake up at the same time. I can hear the disks spinning for a while, even though nobody is accessing the NAS.
Is this normal behaviour on a new UGREEN NAS? I know this might sound silly, but my first thought was whether someone had somehow gained access to the NAS.

2

this is completely normal, especially on a new NAS installation.

When a NAS appears idle to the user, the operating system (UGOS Pro) is often performing essential background system operations. Unless specified otherwise, internal Linux daemons and active apps periodically flush logs or read metadata, which wakes all drives in a storage pool together.

:magnifying_glass_tilted_left: Main Causes of Frequent HDD Wake-Ups on UGOS Pro

1. Initial RAID Synchronization & Background Storage Checks

  • On a newly created storage pool (RAID 1, 5, 6, or 10), UGOS Pro runs initial parity synchronization in the background. Depending on drive capacity (e.g., 8TB drives), this process can take anywhere from 12 to 36 hours.

  • Until synchronization completes, drives will not enter hibernation and will frequently spin up.

2. Media Indexing & AI Face Recognition

  • The built-in UGOS Photos app automatically indexes newly uploaded photos and video files, generating thumbnails and running CPU/GPU-intensive AI face and scene detection in the background.

3. Docker Containers & App Data on HDD Storage

  • If third-party applications or Docker containers are installed on an HDD storage pool, simple background tasks—such as application log updates, database updates (SQLite/PostgreSQL), or network keep-alive pings—will wake up the hard drives every few minutes.

4. S.M.A.R.T. Health Scans & System Logging

  • Periodic S.M.A.R.T. disk health checks, thermal monitoring, and system event logging (/var/log) trigger disk access cycles automatically.

5. Network Traffic & SMB Discovery

  • Devices on your local network (Windows PCs, Smart TVs, mobile phones) sending SMB browse requests, NetBIOS discovery, or DLNA queries can trigger the NAS disk controller to spin up the volume.

:hammer_and_wrench: How to Resolve or Minimize Frequent Disk Wake-Ups

Action Item Recommended Setting
Check RAID Status Open Storage Manager → ensure the pool state is “Healthy” and not currently running “Synchronizing” or “Data Scrubbing”.
Relocate Apps to SSD Install your App Center apps and Docker containers on a dedicated M.2 NVMe SSD storage pool rather than the HDD array.
Adjust Hibernation Timer Go to Control Panel → Hardware & Power → HDD Hibernation and set the idle threshold (e.g., 15 or 30 minutes).
Pause Media Indexing Open Photos App → Settings and pause indexing or restrict AI face processing to specific non-peak hours.