I recently assembled my first NAS using Debian Rolling on an x86 system. It has an SSD for the operating system and two brand new 4TB HDDs (5400 RPM), originally intended for video surveillance. The system is fully encrypted: I unlock the SSD at boot and a key handles the HDD decryption. Ever since I encrypted the drives following a tutorial, they seem to be active even when nothing is supposed to be using them. I can hear them making noise, and it sounds like there's a lot of read/write activity happening, almost like bursts. This is perplexing because: a) According to htop, there's no I/O activity; b) I'm not even sure if both drives are making the noise; c) smartctl shows they both passed the health check; d) I'm not using RAID or anything complex. One drive is just running Samba for my dog picture backups. I initially thought the constant activity might be due to the encryption, but that should show up in htop, right? It seems like the drive controller might be doing something automatically.
1 Answer
Debian Rolling for a server setup? That's an interesting choice! Just a heads-up, sometimes newer distros can have quirks that might not be ideal for a NAS. Are you seeing any disk activity in your logs? It could be a background service or even some scheduled tasks running that you’re not aware of. It might be worth checking your system logs for anything unusual.
What kind of system would you recommend? I need something simple for home use. I’ve tried OpenMediaVault on ARM before, but it felt too limited for my needs.