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Scanner can't detect drives in Storage Spaces


gameiam2008@hotmail.com

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Hey all, I've decided to migrate from Drivepool to Storage Spaces + ReFS recently due to file integrity concerns. One of the things I loved about drivepool is the

Stablebit Scanner integration. Unfortunately, it seems that Scanner is unable to detect/read SMART data from drives in the storage pool. CrystalDiskInfo sees those drives just fine, so I was wondering if Scanner could implement that as well.

 

Cheers.

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Hi I too have been tempted and done many test dp vs ss and I agree the prospect of a self healing file system is ever more tempting. The test's didn't throw up any problems with either system but drivepool has been slow with the updates and improvements for a while now mainly due to cloud drive and is due a massive overhaul . But I have to say I run 2 identical pools one dp the other ss and they both work absolutely fine and just reaching the 6 month mark I will stick with dp for now until the new updates come out but like you if for whatever reason refs can't be fully

Implemented I will also have to make some hard decisions.

 

Good luck and keep us informed

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I found that ReFS on a storage space was EXTREMELY slow compared to DP.  I was seeing disk latency in the 4+ seconds.  Using NTFS resolved the issue, but defeats the purpose of what I was trying to accomplish, so I moved back to DP + SnapRAID.

 

I do *really* miss shadow copies, but it's worth it to have a fast pool.

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Hi while I agree it is slower I wouldn't say it is extremely slow and that may be due to it checking the files more rigorously for errors. I normally rip my blu rays directly on the server and never really move anything off so it isn't really noticed, I never get stutter during play back either using Plex or directly to a media streamer. I can see it been a bit of a issue if large amounts of data are moved back and forth regularly but that is not really what a file server is for very similar to the seagate archive drives

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Yeah, it doesn't, at least not at this time.

 

There are two main issues that need to be addressed here: 

  • When adding the disks to a Storage Spaces array, the physical disks are obfuscated from the system. 
    For instance, an entirely new tree is used in WMI to display these drives and the SMART data. 
    We are aware of this and could implement this rather easily.
  • The "RAID" card issues.  The point of scanner is the surface scan and file system scan.  We want to preserve the files and recover them if possible.  So the question is how to display the "sub-units" of an array in a meaningful way. 
    To do so will require a significant overhaul to StableBit Scanner, and a massive rewrite of a lot of code. This is not a small undertaking.

So, we know it's entirely possible (in fact, some other apps do so), but StableBit Scanner does not currently. 

 

 


 

 

As for performance, Storage Spaces has known performance issues, especially when running in a parity configuration.  

 

ReFS does have a performance hit when writing, due to the integrity checks, but should be close to the same speed as NTFS, maybe 10% slower, depending on the exact hardware present. 

 

However, using both a parity array and ReFS is a sure-fire (and heavily confirmed) way to kill write performance. 

And I believe that mirrored arrays suffer from this as well, but not as drastically. 

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At home, I love drivepool, and while I'd love to have some kind of checksumming functionality and very much hope it is implement/integrated into drivepool at some point, I prefer the advantages of files being easily recoverable from individual disks, extreme ease of expansion, ability to mix different sized disks, etc. I have a script that generates PARs for large files I throw on my home server anyway, so that takes care of most of my concerns about bitrot.

 

I'd very much like it if Stablebit supported reporting SMART data of Storage Space member drives, however, because at work we have many servers running Storage Spaces (high column count mirrored spaces - the performance is quite good), and it bothers me not having an easy way of monitoring the drive smart statuses. In that setting, I don't really care about the block scanning so much, since Windows is already doing volume scrubs - I just want to get alerts regarding SMART status issues. Imo, it'd be well-worth $30 for that.

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Well, for the first, ReFS may be a good step towards this. It's not a perfect solution, but it may help out. 

 

As for the integrity checking for the pool, this is heavily requested feature, and is something we may add in the near future (it's something I've been pushing for, because there is a big demand for it, and it would be fantastic!)

 

 

As for the Storage Spaces stuff, the biggest problem is how to display it, in a meaningful way.   It's something that's come up frequently, and it is something that will be addressed one way or another.  Just don't have an ETA for it. 

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Any progress with supporting Storage Spaces by Scanner?

Lack of progress with development of both DrivePool (still no support for Shadow Copies, practically non working on Windows deduplicated disks) and Scanner (false alerts, no support for Storage Spaces) is bit worrying me. I love both products, use them for long already... but time moves on, operating systems add new features... all this making Stablebit products staying more and more behind.

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Any progress with supporting Storage Spaces by Scanner?

Lack of progress with development of both DrivePool (still no support for Shadow Copies, practically non working on Windows deduplicated disks) and Scanner (false alerts, no support for Storage Spaces) is bit worrying me. I love both products, use them for long already... but time moves on, operating systems add new features... all this making Stablebit products staying more and more behind.

 

No.

 

Specifically, this is something that won't be added right away.  Once we have a stable release for StableBit CloudDrive, this and other feature requests will be processed. 

 

 

But adding support for this (and RAID cards, as it's related) will be a SIGNIFICANT overhaul to the software, and not something that will be simple nor quick. 

TO the point, that this would be a significant change in the product, that it would likely be a version bump (2.6, or 2.7), and Alex would definitely create a blog post about this. 

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