Lots of problems (HDs load, GUI slowness, no shut down)

Despite system is updated with the latest firmware, I’m getting lots of problems lately with my EX4:

  1. system is not shutting down any more: the only way is unplugging the power cable (!!!)
  2. GUI is virtually unreachable: it takes ages to load
  3. all disks lights are often flashing, either I do nothing, or I transfer data (ie, right now I’m FTPing to a share on a volume (I’ve got 4 different volumes in JBOD), all 4 flashes, and that’s what atop command says:
    DSK | sdd | busy 97% | read 766 | write 590 | MBr/s 7.8 | MBw/s 4.8 | avio 7.17 ms |
    DSK | sdb | busy 17% | read 276 | write 534 | MBr/s 1.5 | MBw/s 1.8 | avio 2.14 ms |
    DSK | sda | busy 15% | read 247 | write 535 | MBr/s 1.2 | MBw/s 1.8 | avio 1.96 ms |
    DSK | sdc | busy 15% | read 201 | write 534 | MBr/s 1.0 | MBw/s 1.8 | avio 2.04 ms |
    Of course, I’m writing on volume 4 (sdd), but what is it writing/reading on other 3?

I believe the source of all those problems is the same, but I’m not really confident in Linux, so I definitely need a help…

Thanks in advance for any hint