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[mzpx]

I have a DNS-321 and a number of Linux and XP machines on my home network. No Vista at all. No Macs. I also have a machine dual booting XP and Windows 7 RC.

When the Windows 7 RC is up I can hear the drives in the DNS-321 to spin up every once in a while (let's say 30 minutes?). When the Windows 7 machine is down (or when it is running XP) this does not happen.

I am pretty certain this is some kind of 'discovery' or 'cache search' 'feature' in Windows 7, but I don't know which one and I would love to disable it as it negates the whole point of automatically spinning down the drives when not in use. I have all the servers / services on the DNS-321 disabled except the file server.

Anyone has a clue what Windows 7 'feature' might be doing this (and how to disable it)?

Thanks in advance.

p.s. Strangely this does not happen to my Linux file server even though it runs Samba much like the DNS-321 and they are on the same network. Still, the Windows 7 box does not bother that machine. Maybe because that has more memory and whatever Windows 7 is 'polling' that box can provide from memory cache?

[JoeSchmuck]

Do you have the NAS drives mapped to a drive letter in Windoze 7?

I have Windoze 7 (retail) and noticed my drives spin up on a rare occasion, normally if I open Windows Explorer or something that goes to see what drives are out there.  I also keep my hibernation setting at 30 minutes.  I try to minimuze the number of times my drives power up and down.  If I have a 60 minute setting, I'd choose that.

What I can't say is this is related to Windows 7 specifically since I've always had either the RC or Retail product for this NAS.

Something else you could look at is what software do you have that may look at the drives such as AntiVirus software, automatic backup software, automatic defragmentation...  You get the point.  Indexing is not an option for a mapped drive so you can forget about that one.

Hope you find a smoking gun.

-Joe

[TheWitness]

Yea, I have noted this too.  The solution is to install Wireshark on your Windows7 PC and setup a capture that filters only the ip address of the DNS321.  Let the capture run for about 30 minutes or so, or until your drives spin up, then post the results of the capture here.

If you do that, then I can tell you why it's happening.  It could have something to do with Microsoft's new "Network Discovery Protocol" and Home Group support in Windows 7.  There is a way to disable it (control panel, administrative, services), but that will likely have a negative site affect.

Seems to me I already did this.  Wait a second.  Let me find the two service names and post them here too.......

I'm "guessing" that either of the following are the culprits.

HomeGroup Listener - Configures computer for HomeGroups
HomeGroup Provider - Conducts network tasks associated with Hoemgroups
Network List Service - Collects and Stores Network configuration information
Network Location Awareness - Collects and Stores Network configuration information
SSDP Discovery - Discovers uPNP devices

TheWitness

[mzpx]

@TheWittness

Thanks for the tips. I WILL do this, but not this week. (I am working on upgrading the wife's computers, that will take a while.)

- In my few attempts to use sniffers before I was always hampered by the lack of HUB available, I only have switches at home. But you are correct, I should be able to run this on the Win7 box itself. I will still have to learn how to make sense of the WireShark output.

- I really was not looking forward to become an MCE, but sometimes you just have to do what you have to do. If our resident MVP doesn't know the answer - no one does. *smile*

- Just 'thinking', none of those services SHOULD trigger a drive spinup, the box should be able to answer those inquiries w/o accessing the HDD. So it is more likely the way how the DNS-321 implements one of those features.

(I have no HomeGoroups configured on the network, so 'HomeGroup' related inquiries should be rejected as is. The DNS-321 can not 'join' any 'HomeGroup' anyway. 'Network info' could include the list of available shares, but the DNS-321 should list those from memory cache, w/o any disk access. And I have the uPNP / DLNA server disabled, so calls to that should be rejected flatly too.)

I was more thinking along the lines that once Win7 sees a share it would try to discover the content, possibly cache for searches. But that sounds pretty rude and dumb behaviour.

- Also: I actually have the Windows network discovery support (or whatever it is called) disabled on the DNS-321. I can try to enable that and see if that quiets things down.

[gunrunnerjohn]

FWIW, I have Windows 7 on three computers here, and my DNS-323 and DNS-321 hibernate just fine.  I never seen them cause the drives to start without me specifically addressing the box.

[invisible69]

to:mzpx, did you solve your problem?

I'm having similar problem on my DNS and Windows 7.

On a clean Win7 install it didn't use to trigger drive spin-up (that I can remember) unless I accessed the Volume_1 from the Windows Explorer.

After a few weeks, I started getting random drive spin-up out of hibernation for no apparent reason.

A)I would be surfing the internet on IE with noting else running and suddenly the drive spins-up
B)I open a .pdf file that is stored on my desktop and the NAS HDD spins-up (interesting to note that in the history of accessed files in adobe pdf reader, there is a file that is stored on the nas.  Did Adobe verify that the files stored in history are still accessible upon starting-up?)

I have a couple hypothesis:

1-I once mapped a network drive on the NAS, but every time I accessed the Windows Explorer, the drives would spin up, so I removed that mapped network drive.  Did Win7 keep some registry data?

2-I have accessed files on the NAS (e.g. pdf, word docs, mp3, etc)  did Win 7 keep a log of recently accessed files and try to refresh the info to verify that these accessed files are still accessible?

[_RT_]

Any updates on this?
Just got a new laptop with Windows 7.  Was able to map the drives easily, but now the drives don't hibernate until after the laptop is shutdown.

Worked fine with XP till now.

Thanks all-

[gunrunnerjohn]

Are you mapping the drives to Windows?  I have a DNS-321 and DNS-323, they both snooze just fine with three Windows 7 machines on the network.

[_RT_]

I did map them, yes.

Is that the problem?

[gunrunnerjohn]

I'm guessing that Windows 7 attempts to access any mapped drives, probably why they wake up.  Try not mapping them and see if that makes a difference.

[_RT_]

I  keep all of my pictures on my dns-321.  if i don't have a mapped drive, it's not visible in Picasa.

There must be another way.