Creating a pool that includes existing files.

[endure]

I've just joined the forum. I have raised a ticket for this but thought I'd repeat it here. This is what my ticket says:

 

Hi there

 

I'm thinking about getting a copy of Drivepool for my WHS2011 server. Reading the manual tells me that if I create a pool on a drive that already has files on it then those files don't appear on the pool drive. 

 

Is there any way of making them appear on the pool? I have an HP microserver that already has files on all its four drives. I'd just like to pool them all into one big drive and have the files already there appear in the pool.

 

 

cheers

 

Richard

 

 

[lee1978]

Hi and welcome

 

Yes once the pool has been created and folders created just drag and drop the files from the root of the drive into the pool folders and drive pool will do its magic.

[endure]

Thank you.

 

Another quickie. If file duplication is turned on is double the amount of disk space used by the same set of files? Is the total drive capacity halved - a bit like RAID 1?

[JazzMan]

Yes, if you have whole disk duplication turned on, the effective useable space is half the raw space.  The advantage to this, though, is that you have an automatic immediate online backup and don't have to deal with all the stories you see about parity based RAID arrays not rebuilding or taking a week to rebuild.  The other advantage is being able to include a mixture of drives of any size.

 

You can also configure to duplicate only certain folders also, though, so if there was a lot of temp work in the pool or something you could survive losing, you can exclude those folders from duplication.

[endure]

Thanks again  

[endure]

One more question please.

 

I have a server with 8TB of drives with 4TB of files on them.

 

I install Drivepool and it creates a pool of the 4TB of free space.

 

I copy the 4TB of files into the pool so that there's now 4TB of free space outside of the pool. 

 

Can I add that 4TB into the pool now that it's empty?

[Quinn]

Endure,

 

When you install DrivePool and add your existing drives to it, DrivePool will see a pool size of 8TB (your total size across all drives added to the pool), but 4TB will be listed as "Other" (your existing files on the drives themselves).  As you move (not copy) your files from the drive(s) themselves into the pool drive, the files will be added to the pool itself, and the space will be reclaimed automatically to be used in the pool.

 

You can also do something called "seeding", which will speed up the process.  You don't have to "seed", it's an option:

 

http://wiki.covecube.com/StableBit_DrivePool_Q4142489

 

-Quinn

[endure]

OK thank you. Time to get the credit card out 

[Christopher (Drashna)]

Another quickie. If file duplication is turned on is double the amount of disk space used by the same set of files? Is the total drive capacity halved - a bit like RAID 1?

 

Specifically, when duplication is enabled, for any folder that is duplicated, the software will try to maintain two (or more) copies on different, physical disks.   

 

RAID 1 mirrors the raw blocks of data, and requires the same sized disks (or "losing" disk space).  Additionally, RAID 1 is usually for just 2 disks, while StableBit DrivePool can use any number of disks.