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Thanks for the reply and for offering to investigate. I did some more extensive troubleshooting and wanted to post the results in case it's useful. It now appears that DrivePool itself was not the cause. I isolated the issue by testing the exact same files in multiple ways: Older files stored in the pool consistently read at only ~38–50 MB/s when tested over SMB using dd with iflag=direct (bypassing the Linux page cache) A hard link to the same file was just as slow, confirming it wasn't related to the DrivePool path. Creating a new physical copy of the exact same file immediately increased read speed to ~140 MB/s (SMB) A brand new file (download) read at ~135-140 MB/s as well. Finally, I used DrivePool File Placement + Balance to move one of the slow files from one physical SSD to another. After the move, the exact same file immediately increased from ~48 MB/s to ~140 MB/s. We also verified that the files were: not fragmented (single extent), not sparse, not NTFS compressed. SMB configuration, signing, encryption and the network were also ruled out. The only consistent pattern is that older files are slow until they are rewritten or physically relocated, after which they become fast again. My current theory is that this is related to SSD data retention / NAND refresh behavior rather than DrivePool itself. The system was powered off for roughly 8 months (we moved to new house and I never got the time), and rewriting the data appears to "refresh" it. Would have thought that WD RED (purchased end of 2024) shouldn't have this problem but that's the only thing I can think of. So I don't think there is actually a DrivePool issue here anymore. Sorry to have wasted your time, hopefully this can help if anyone else runs inte similar symptoms.

Just a heads up, Alex did take a look into this, and did find a solution that is actually lower level, shouldn't keep the drives awake and allow them to sleep. You can find the installer for this version here: https://dl.covecube.com/DrivePoolWindows/beta/download/StableBit.DrivePool_2.3.14.1744_x64_BETA.exe