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Non-Realtime Duplication Mechanics

January 5, 2017, 2:00 pm
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When realtime duplication is disabled, and an already-duplicated file is updated, presumably this file is written to only one drive (out of, say, 2 it was duplicated onto) ... how does DrivePool later know which of the 2 now-different versions of the file to duplicate?

 

I ask this because I'm writing a file auditing / change indexing / integrity-verifying program that utilizes a custom alternate data stream which is added to each file with miscellaneous tracking information. When that happens, the main data stream ($DATA) doesn't change, and I'm using special overrides to disable updating the DateModified values.

 

My guess is that DP probably looks at whichever file has the newest date, and chooses that as the new "master" file and overwrites the other one...maybe taking into account the filesize as well?

 

Since I'm not changing DateModified and I'm writing to an alternate stream (so the primary "file size" would be the same I think), would this end up randomly writing to 1 file only out of a duplicated pair and not getting duplicated?

 

If the answer to that is yes, then - if I have realtime duplication *enabled* and all of the above is true, would my new data stream get duplicated to both duplicates of a file, in spite of the primary file size not changing and the datemodified not changing?

 

I'm not only writing this program for use with DrivePool, but since I obviously use it, I want to make sure it works, and how I need to have it set for it to work properly. Thanks!

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Did an inplace upgrade no longer see drives!

January 7, 2017, 6:01 pm
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I had some issues with Windows 10 ENT 64bit and needed to do an inplace install to fix the issues. Kept apps and files and such, however my drives are not showing in DrivePool (data is intact and in Disk Manager). 

 

While the data is there, the drivepool is not showing up in the app or in my computer. But the drives are fully accessible. Also notable the Covefs driver is not showing up (after many reinstalls following the KB articles on full uninstall/reinstall). Any other things I can try? 

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Some questions before I switch to DrivePool

January 8, 2017, 12:08 pm
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Hello,

 

I've loosely followed DrivePool over the years, having been a WHS 2003 user for a long time back in the day. I ended up walking away from disk pooling for a while once disks became too large for WHS, until Storage Spaces arrived. I'm now 99% decided to leave Storage Spaces behind and switch to DrivePool, but I have a few quick questions I wasn't able to locate answers to easily in the forums:

 

1) I'm assuming that there are no problems using it in a (2016) Windows Domain given the Essentials support

 

2) Can I move pool disks between interfaces? Specifically, I'm in the process of migrating data right now, if I were to start a DrivePool pool with the first disk on USB, and later move that disk to a SATA interface (no slots available until I am able to pull failing disks), should this be an issue? It looks like not with the signature based disk ID, but I thought I'd ask.

 

3) There was a three, but I've forgotten it now.

 

Thank you!

 

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Tool to keep disks alive (prevent head parking)

January 8, 2017, 1:44 pm
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For those who aren't already aware of the issue - some drives (particularly WD "Green" drives) aggressively park their heads (every 8 seconds) to save power. This has caused serious longevity issues with those drives.

 

I was switching disks over to a new server I built, and I noticed the load cycle count was quite high for a lot of drives. For some, I had already used the WDIDLE3 utility in the past, but not for all of them. Since using that tool is such a pain to do, I decided to just write a little script/service to keep the disks alive instead.

 

Posting it here in case anyone else would like to use it. Edit the "KeepDisksAlive.ps1" file for notes, how to install, how to customize if desired, etc. Once installed, it runs as a system service. It writes to "volume paths", so there's no need to have your disks mounted to letters/folders.

 

I don't think it will lead to any appreciable difference in power consumption or wear & tear as opposed to just having disks that don't park themselves in general. I monitored my UPS power consumption and didn't see a difference. Also, I monitored the sum of all my drive's load cycle counts before and after to confirm it's working. I included what I used to do that in a subfolder.

 

(Not a DrivePool issue, but I figured many running DrivePool could take advantage of this)

 

Attached File  KeepDisksAlive-v1.0.zip   458.87KB   8 downloads

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How can I force DrivePool to NOT fill space on a drive?

January 9, 2017, 11:34 am
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I'm using drive pool for storing a number of media files.  I use a plug-in to fill each drive in order, before moving on to the next, and when a drive is full I make a copy of it and put it in off-site storage.

 

I'm looking for some way to ensure that if I delete a file (ie: a bad copy of a movie, or e-book) from a disk that I've already created the off-site storage for ... that it doesn't fill that now empty space with a new file (if it does, that file will never get backed up off-site).

 

Is there a switch or plug-in that would make this happen?

 

Thanks in advance for any help you can offer.

 

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Question on Clean Install on Windows 10

January 10, 2017, 2:30 pm
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Hello everyone... I tried researching the answer to my question, but could not find the solution I needed. Basically I is dedicated to the operating system. I then have 4 WD Red drives that are 3TB each solely dedicated to drive pool. These 4 drives are pooled togehter and duplicated 4 times. I know this is overkill, but better safe than sorry...
  
[Current setup]
 
SSD Drive - OPERATING SYTEM ONLY 
WD Red 3TB - DRIVE POOL
WD Red 3TB - DRIVE POOL
WD Red 3TB - DRIVE POOL
WD Red 3TB - DRIVE POOL
 
I think I just need to do a clean install and reformat my C drive which is the SSD drive. I don't think that by doing this my data will be deleted from my WD Red drives. However, I found another thread where technical support recommended removing the hard drives (http://community.covecube.com/index.php?/topic/1199-reinstallation-of-windows-os/?hl=reinstall). However, removing the hard drives is somewhat labor intensive for me and I would prefer to leave them intact. 
 
Here is my understanding of the steps to do a clean install:
 
1. Deactivate Stablebit license
2. Do a clean install of Windows 10 while reformatting my SSD drive
3. Reintall Drive Pool and activate with license.
4. Drive Pool should automatically recognize my WD Red drives?
 
Could someone confirm these steps? Any help would be greatly appreciated.
 
Thanks,
Edgar 
 
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Drive failing, backedup to new Drive, how to add new and remove failing from Pool?

January 10, 2017, 7:51 pm
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Hope this makes sense...

 

2 days ago StableBit Scanner and WHS 2011 reported that a drive was failing....and a brand new 6TB WD Red drive of all things!

 

So I shutdown the server, physically removed the drive and backed up the data to another 6TB drive.  I mostly backed up the Server Folders that I don't have duplication turned on for - as the duplicated server folders should be ok (dupe copies on the other drives) - correct?

 

So I was all set to add the NEW 6TB drive into the pool and then follow the instructions in this posting:  http://wiki.covecube.com/StableBit_DrivePool_Q4142489 to move the backed up data back into the pool.  If I understand that process, once I do that, all of the non-duplicated files should be back in the pool and DrivePool will do it's thing to re-populate the new drive with dupe copies of anything that was on the failing drive....

 

But then it hit me - I haven't removed the failing drive from the pool yet...it still shows as "missing" - so I'm guessing DrivePool won't actually start duplicating the dupe copies of stuff that was in duplicated folders on the missing drive until I remove it from the pool via the dashboard?

 

I don't want to screw this up - so what is the proper approach for this scenario I have?  Here's the facts summarized:

 

* 6TB failing drive ("failing") physically removed from the server and non duplicated folders backed up to a new 6TB drive ("new")

* NOTE:  I also backed up some other "more critical" folders that ARE in fact already setup for duplication in the pool - just in case (probably didn't need to do this - but figured that if I had as much of the duplicated files backed up, I could use the instruction in the link above to move the data from the backed up folders back into the pool once that "new" disk was added, and save DrivePool some work/time - is that a correct assumption?

* I have already added the "new" drive to the pool (ne with the backed up files noted above) and was about to go through the instructions in the link above to move that data back into the pool

* I still haven't removed the "failing" drive from the DrivePool yet

 

If you folks can please advise on the best way to approach this - that would be most appreciated.

 

Let me know if anything is not clear

 

 

 

LATE ADDITION:

- Forgot to mention I'm running WHS 2011 on an HP N40L.  AND since I had to do some work on this drive issues, I decided to take the time to swap out my external drive enclosure, install a NEW PCIe card (6GB/s eSATA card with 4 ports) and also upgrade my memory (none of which has anything to do with the drives) - BUT - I now have the origirnal eSATA port on my N40L free - as well as a second external eSATA port -

 

So it just dawned on me that I could drop the "failing" drive in a single external drive enclosure I have - plug it into one of the free eSATA ports - and then REMOVE the "failing" drive in the Dashboard - and let DrivePool do it's thing to migrate the data over to the "new" drive I added.

 

I only have about 2TB of data on the "failing" drive - and have about 3TB free on the "new" 6TB dirve (rest is the backed up data in a separate folder NOT in the "ServerFolder" - so not in the pool. So enough space to let DrivePool do it's thing - and worst case if something doesn't get pulled off the failing drive - I have the backed up data.

 

So this would seem to be the best approach based on what I've read - correct?

 

If not - let me know...

 

And then I need to update my version of DrivePool ;-)

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Moving files from disk to disk - the best way?

January 11, 2017, 2:24 pm
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Hi All,

 

I'm back again with another potentially stupid question... The 'Pool on my home server contains the usual household shared folders: Documents; Pictures; Music; Videos - accessed from various client PCs, Plex on the Roku, Squeezeplayers etc. There are four HDDs in the pool, all files have 2 x duplication.

 

Because I'm a bit anal (and because I've been burned in the past) I use placement rules to force my folders onto the exact disks where I want them. So Documents & Pictures are duplicated on disks 1 & 3; Music & Videos are duplicated on disks 2 & 4. This allows me to ensure my files are duplicated on two different brands of HDD (a year or two ago a pair of Seagates that I bought at the same time, failed at the same time, teaching me a valuable lesson...).

 

Anyhoo, my Videos folder is getting very fat, so I'm a bit low on space on disks 2 & 4. No problem, I'll just move all my Music onto the same drives as Documents & Pictures (1 & 3), where there's plenty of room. How best to do this?

 

  • My initial thought was to simply change the placement rules for the Music folder, and let DrivePool get on with it.
  • But is there any benefit at all in shutting down the DrivePool service and moving the folder myself? Then restarting DrivePool and changing the placement rules to match what I just did? A bit like the manual way we pre-seed drives? Unlike my pre-seeding, I'd be moving the folder onto two entirely different physical drives...

 

Told you it was a potentially stupid question!

cheers, Simon

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Duplication on backup server - is this possible?

January 12, 2017, 3:51 pm
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My main server is running out of drive bays and capacity. I want to have duplication enabled on everything. I can't upgrade all the drives to larger sizes. I can reuse another pc as backup server and in that case I will have to turn off duplication on the shares since I see no way to have Drivepool duplicate across the network. And the backup server would have its own Drivepool. Is there any other pssible solution? 

 

How do you move disks from main server? I can turn off duplication, then 'remove disk' so all files are migrated off it. But then I will have to copy all the data back once the disk is in the 2nd server which is a lot of redundant copies. What I'd ideally like is to have a set of physical disks with duplicated data which I can then remove and move to 2nd pc and start a pool. 

 

 

 

 

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Ignoring Drives for Drivepool

January 13, 2017, 10:17 am
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Does anyone have a way of making Drivepool ignore drives on a system.  Drivepool shows my system drive (C:) and the Recovery Drive (F:) as available for it to use in pooling.

 

Don't think we want either drive to be used and I'm wondering if there's a way to not let a certain drive appear in the list of available drives. 

 

Thanks

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Need some help troubleshooting

January 13, 2017, 3:59 pm
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I migrated a friend to windows 10 a few weeks ago and he had DP installed on WHS2011. I reinstalled DP and the pool came back up. Now the problem...At first 3 drives kept going missing and wouldnt come back up till i restarted the machine. This actually killed a 2TB drive and caused bad sectors on a brand new 5tb we had just put in.I ended up figuring out that the problem was the PCIE sata card. So i removed it and replaced it with a mediasonic probox.

 

Now i thought all the problems were fixed but now every time i go into the balancer options and into placement, the GUI stops responding, The pool becomes inaccessible, the DP service hangs on stopping if i try to stop it. and if i try to restart the machine windows hangs on the Restarting message( stayed there for 2hrs) and i am force to use the power button to restart. When i restart the PC stays on the windows logo and it spins. I am letting it run a bit to see if it will pass but i have also rebooted a few times until i got it to start. I think it is one of the drives causing the issue but i was thinking that maybe the DP logs could shed some light. Scanner seems to not see anything out of the ordinary.

 

So how should i proceed to get the logs?

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Drivepool Client Only?

January 14, 2017, 3:48 pm
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Hi,

 

I'm setting up a new NAS which I think will use Drivepool. I want to install Drivepool on my client machine for the sole purpose of connecting to this NAS and controlling the pool - do I need another license to do this, because it'll be acting as a client only, I have no intention of creating a drivepool on my client machine.

 

Thanks

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Incoherent duplication

January 15, 2017, 1:11 am
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HI all,

 

I just lost one disk. Then tried to remove it from the pool but without success. Always got errors (cannot access the disk). After having tried all the options of removal without success, I simply remove it from my pc.

 

Now, after a reboot, DP stays stuck on "Pool organization" and mentioning "Incoherent duplication".

What does it mean ???

 

What should I do? That's several hours that it remains on the same status. If I reboot, I got the same results.

 

My idea was simply to remove the duplication and then put it back again, but as I've lost a disk, I'm just afraid to lose some files by doing it...

 

Thx for help.

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ORICO Enclosure - Noises

January 15, 2017, 9:59 am
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I recently got an ORICO enclosure since I ran out of space in my case and after a browse around the forums it seems to be a brand that's recommended.

 

Been using it for about 2 days now and everything works fine, transfer speeds are good (~140MB/s) but quite often it'll make a sound, not quite a "beep" but a low pitched noise. Is this normal?

 

Just wanted to be sure I didn't get a dud or anything. If this is the normal operating noise I'll have to find a way to move it further away or something so it's not as noticeable.

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Has anyone upgraded from Windows 2012 Essentials to 2016?

January 15, 2017, 2:34 pm
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I would rather not go through the process of setting up the server / drive pool again but not sure if I'll have to with an upgrade.  Has anyone tried?

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Duplicating in use files

January 16, 2017, 4:17 pm
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How does Drive Pool handle duplicating in use files that the application tends to lock such as as VMDK, VDI, outlook PST, MS Access Databases? 

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Beta vs Stable

January 17, 2017, 1:44 am
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Hi,

 

I'm currently trialing Drivepool, I'm using the Stable version. I'm seeing some things which I have googled, such as read striping only seemingly reading from one disk so transfer maxes out at 120mb/s (when I'd expect faster), and these seem to be fixed in the beta. http://community.covecube.com/index.php?/topic/1438-testing-read-striping-win-10/page-2this topic is from 2015, so I assumed it was in the stable version by now - but unless I'm missing something it doesn't seem to be - from googling I can see that the current stable version 2.1.1.561 was out in 2014! What does this mean for Drivepool? Is development stagnet? Why aren't the beta fixes making it in Stable? Usually I wouldn't touch a beta product with a barge pole for my data, but is the beta the branch I should be running?

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Should I rebalance pre-seeded drives?

January 17, 2017, 10:45 am
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As I was migrating from a damaged StorageSpaces pool, I ended up pre-seeding a couple of disks before transferring all my disks to the DrivePool based disk. So I have a couple of disks that currently have the majority of the content on the pool. It's significant, so say, 2TB on each of a 4TB disk, but the total pool size is much larger.

 

Should I explicitly tell it to perform a re-balance now, or let it just get to it when it gets to it? It sort of seemed like from the settings that an automatic rebalance wouldn't bother re-allocating until they were much more full, so I'm wondering if I should actually wait until then or get ahead of it.

 

Thank you!

 

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Read Striping

January 18, 2017, 6:22 am
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Hi,

 

I'm trying to get my head around Read Striping. In theory this should make it act a bit like a RAID 1 right, combining the two drives to get an improved read speed? I'm not expecting 2x read speeds, but at least 1.5x or so of one of the disks read speeds should make sense right?

 

However when I run CrystalMark on Drivepool, I find that it's basically limited to the speed of one of the drives - why isn't it combining the two drives to get a read speed that's above the speed of one drive on it's own? I care more about read speed because I can always improve write speed with a SSD cache.

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Event Viewer Warnings

January 18, 2017, 2:51 pm
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Windows Server 2016 Standard with Essentials Role. DrivePool version 2.2.0.737 BETA.

 

I have been seeing an issue with the File Distribution not Optimal. I just looked at Event Viewer and see a number of warnings for the DrivePool disk (disk 4)

 

The IO operation at logical block address 0x1 for Disk 4 (PDO name: \Device\0000002e) was retried.

The IO operation at logical block address 0x11 for Disk 4 (PDO name: \Device\0000002e) was retried.

The IO operation at logical block address 0x21 for Disk 4 (PDO name: \Device\0000002e) was retried.

 

This goes on for about 7 minutes every 10 -15 seconds after a clean restart of the server.   Looking back, I see this is a constant issue a few times a day.

 

Any suggestions on what I can look for.

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