Why can't my NAS drives enter standby mode?
Applicable Products
QTS, QuTS hero
Limitation
On the NAS, many built-in services, apps, and utilities routinely access the system and may prevent your drives from entering standby mode. Check the following list and disable or close these services, apps, and utilities. Also ensure that you have enabled disk standby mode in Control Panel > System > Hardware.
NAS Built-in Services
- Auto router configuration (UPnP): Check if this port forwarding service is enabled in myQNAPcloud.
- Device sharing: If your NAS is shared with multiple devices on the same network, your drives cannot enter standby mode while other devices access the NAS.
- Indexing or thumbnail generation: Your NAS indexes files and folders every time you upload data to the NAS. You NAS also generates thumbnails for newly-added media files. Depending on the number of files, the indexing and thumbnail generation process may take a long time to finish. Drives cannot enter standby mode during this period.
- Microsoft Networking: AD service, WINS server, or Domain Master
- Network access to the NAS: If your NAS is connected to the internet, ensure that you do not enable DMZ or port forwarding on your router or firewall. This makes your NAS vulnerable to unsolicited access and may compromise the security and functionality of your drives, preventing them from entering standby mode.
- Shared folder mapping
- USB Wi-Fi dongle: Using a USB Wi-Fi dongle to connect to a Wi-Fi network via an access point may prevent drives from entering standby mode.
QNAP Apps and Utilities
- BT downloads: Check if Download Station or other P2P apps are running download or upload tasks.
- Container Station: Check if containers are still running in Container Station.
- HybridMount File Cloud Gateway connection: This connection routinely accesses and checks cloud services to synchronize file lists.
- Notes Station 3
- OceanKTV: OceanKTV routinely synchronizes recommended playlists with online databases.
- Q'center Agent: Q'center Agent regularly collects disk health and monitoring information.
- Q'center Server: Q'center Server stores information that the NAS sends regularly.
- QuFirewall
- QmailAgent: QmailAgent routinely accesses and checks email accounts to synchronize and back up emails.
- Virtualization Station: Check if virtual machines are still running in Virtualization Station.
- Qfinder Pro, Quick Install Wizard, or NetBak Replicator: These services routinely search for your NAS on the network.
- QVPN Service
Third-Party Apps
- Mattermost
- McAfee Antivirus
- Plex Media Server
Analysis
Additionally, here are the steps you can take to identify the processes that might be preventing hard drives from spinning down.
Log in to the QTS/QuTS hero as an administrator.
Head to the control panel, disable built-in services such as Microsoft Networking and Multimedia Console.
Disable the apps highlighted in the App Center. You can disable Virtualization Station, Container Station, Hybrid Backup Sync, Download Station, Media Streaming add-on, Helpdesk or Q'center related apps.
You can access the NAS via SSH by following this tutorial, and execute the following command:
cd /dev/shm; wget https://eu1.qnap.com/Storage/tsd/utility/standby_debug.sh -O standby_debug.sh ; sudo sh standby_debug.shNote: The last files that were modified will be displayed on the screen. The files that were recently modified might be the reason why the standby mode fails.
Wait for the command to finish and check if the status LED has gone off. You can find the standby test log in the Public folder
Identify the process that caused the disk from failing to spindown by reviewing the last modified file's path. For instance:
Last file modification: Wed Mar 9 15:15:46 2022/share/CACHEDEV1_DATA/.qpkg/Qcenter/qnap-cms/var/log/rrd_pregen.log.
This indicates that Q'center has written on the data volume and stopped the hard disk from spindown.Lastly, turn off that function or disable the process in the App center.
