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Hard Drive Grinding on my QNAP NAS when Browsing Libraries


mike2k20

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mike2k20

Hi,

I installed Emby 4.5.2.0 on my QNAP TVS-x72XT unit yesterday to evaluate using as a local media server.  My NAS box is configured with a series of RAID1 volumes.  The first RAID1 volume is the QNAP default which stores QNAP files, apps and my personal files.  This is where I installed Emby, and I am using the Cache path option to store all server cache files into a folder on this RAID1 volume.  The Video files themselves are on a separate RAID1 volume that is on physically separate drives.  The drives are all Seagate IronWolf pro drives.  I am accessing the Emby server through a web browser on my PC to the NAS 

I have a few sets of Libraries I created and did the media scans.  For all of these Libraries, I configured a minimalist approach for the fetchers - I have it configured to pull only Primary images, I have set the "Maximum number of backdrops per item" to 0.

The issue I am having is that when I browse from library to library,, movie to movie or show to show (i.e. getting information about the show or movie - not playing them), the hard drives of the RAID1 grind like mad.  For example, if I go into my TV show library and go into a specific TV show (where it shows the description, next up, seasons, cast and crew, etc), the drives grind like mad.  Any time I go into a TV show it does this.  Similar when I go into a movie.  Even going from the Home Emby menu to the Manage Emby server wegpage there is unexpected grinding.

I enabled debug logging and looked at the logs.  There is no playing or transcoding going on,  most of the entries contain Gets and Responses.

Info HttpServer: HTTP GET

Info HttpServer: HTTP Response

 

To debug this further, I pulled up the QNAP resource monitor and observed that there is activity on the raid volume during this grinding.  I would expect this to be reads, but QNAP is reporting it is majorly writes.  Note that I turned off debug logging to get these charts1.png.dc728021248c9c792df918fb3ea8be52.png

2a.png.985bd61adfa6c4309fdd0a49fa3f84da.png

So I'm not exactly sure what is going on.  Why would there be writes occurring when browsing Libraries?  Has anyone with a QNAP seen similar behavior?  I'd like to understand this a bit more before trying other scenarios (such as running off a single drive, i.e. non-RAID, etc).

 

Thanks

 

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PenkethBoy

well the server has to log whats happening, write to the cache, metadata folder etc etc

and those graphs show only minimal activity

looking through the library will generate reads and writes - image files loaded for first time - need processing etc

 

I would move the nas into a cupboard and forget about it - As you hve NAS drives then dont worry about it - its what they are designed for - if you are using desktop drives - hope you have a good backup

 

Basically nothing wrong - all standard stuff - my nas has been running for four years with considerable more activity and i s chugging along nicely - with 8 HGST drives which are quiet - other HDD are much noisier.

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mike2k20

Yep that's the issue - seems its processing image files for the first time while browsing (resizing images to be exact, putting them into the resized-images folder in the cache directory ).  Do you happen to know if there is a way to do this processing once up front?  Thanks.

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PenkethBoy

dont think so - as the premise is to do the images on demand (view) - so the library scan are shorter - as people complain they are too slow as everybody wants instant these days

you can set them to d/l in advance - library settings - but they get resized etc when you view them - and they expire after 30 days anyway so will happen again

this is not specific to emby - plex et al do the same - have to process and save images and other things to disk at some point

sounds like you have chosen noisey disks - thats why you notice it

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mike2k20

Ok thanks.  I did experiment with and without the D/L in advance  setting but it didn't make a difference - probably because its most likely just the resize causing the grind.  Did not know the images expire in 30 days.  That is strange, can it be controlled anywhere not to expire?  My media is relatively static.  I have the same collection under plex and outside of the initial scans its pretty silent in comparison.

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PaulJNodine

If the noise of the hard drives is that bothersome, you could always upgrade to SSD. Seagate, Western Digital and Samsung all have NAS SSD that are made for the heavy reading and writing of a NAS environment

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mike2k20

They are Ironwolf Pro drives, so they can take it.  Its not the noise I have an issue with, it just seems to be excessive in nature - the less wear and tear the better.  Note my only comparison is running the same collection via Plex, which is no where remotely close to the amount of grinding going on compared with Emby.  I don't like the idea that some of generated data will expire, just to be regenerated again (i.e. just repeating the same work over again).  For my use case which is for local use on a single TV, I'd simply like to have all this work done up front once rather than on the fly, and to have an option that it doesn't expire (the only time this would change is if media was deleted, and would expect the associated files would also be deleted).

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Happy2Play
On 10/13/2020 at 8:07 AM, mike2k20 said:

Did not know the images expire in 30 days.  That is strange, can it be controlled anywhere not to expire?  

You sort of can but it applies to all cached items, it is the "Cache file cleanup" hidden maintenance task.  Only accessible via the api.

I have no idea of the consequences of disable this cleanup task though. 

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mike2k20
1 hour ago, Happy2Play said:

You sort of can but it applies to all cached items, it is the "Cache file cleanup" hidden maintenance task.  Only accessible via the api.

I have no idea of the consequences of disable this cleanup task though. 

That sounds interesting, I'll research it and try to fiddle with it.  Would be nice if we had more customization options regarding generated data like this.

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mike2k20

So I ended up changing my NAS configuration around a bit which is working well.

The system/default/boot volume is now a RAID1 using two M.2 drives.  The rest are mechanical drives in RAID1 format.  Emby is installed on the M.2 RAID1 and all the Emby files reside there except for the Cache files which is on one of the RAID1 volumes with mechanical drives.  Response is fast, no grinding, and with the cache on the mechanical drives there's no worry of the cache generation increasing M.2 wear with writes

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