Why is there traffic at an external SSD that is only attached, not mounted?

[carsten_h]

Hello!

I have installed Proxmox on a Lenovo M720q where I attached an external SSD to USB 3. This has a GUID partition table and a hfsplus partition.
The device for this ssd is /dev/sdb and the partition is /dev/sdb2 and there is a standard EFI partition under /dev/sdb1.
The SSD is only attached, not mounted. The SSD is not declared as a storage, the device will be mounted by an LXC container.

There is a udev-rule:

SUBSYSTEM=="block", ACTION=="add", ATTRS{idVendor}=="174c", ATTRS{idProduct}=="55aa", ATTR{partition}=="2", SYMLINK+="sdmusik", MODE="0666"

which will create a symlink of /dev/sdb2 named /dev/sdmusik every time the SSD is added to the server.
This symlink will be mounted by the container with the following entry inside the conf-file:

lxc.mount.entry: /dev/sdmusik dev/sdmusik none bind,optional,create=file

In the moment the container is not running.

The strange thing is that the LED of the external SSD is blinking shortly every 10 seconds, so there has to be something which is doing something with the SSD.
Also when the LXC-container is running and the SSD is mounted (read-only) the SSD is blinking every 10 seconds although the Container is doing nothing with the SSD at this time.

What can this be and can it be switched off?

 

[carsten_h]

Doesn't really anyone know what Proxmox is doing with an only connected drive?

 

[gfngfn256]

Don't know what USB to SSD (SATA?) you're using - but IME I've had some that will always blink the led activity signal even without any read/write. (This may occur more often on true USB3 adapters). Maybe try it in a different PC/MAC (hint: HFS+) - and check led activity there.

Check host lsblk to make sure it's not mounted in any way. ACPI USB activity maybe another factor.