Need help. DP doing exactly the opposite of what it is being told to do!

[blueman2]

I have been using DP for many years.  Decided to replace a drive recently, and the entire pool just went crazy in terms of where it is putting files!!  

 

1) I set file placement to put certain files (such as VMs) only on my fast drives.  It promptly put them all on the very slowest drive that I had explicitly excluded!

 

2) I set it to never put unduplicated files on the large, slow drive.  It promptly started to put all the unduplicated files over on that drive!  

 

Here are some screen shots.  Starting with VM location, here is what is set:

 

 

Yet after doing this, all VMs were moved to the 8TB drive that I specifically de-selected.  

 

And here is the selection showing to not put unduplicated files on the 8TB drive.  Yet, the file is now full of them.  

 

I did not change anything.  Yet now the balancer is doing the opposite of what it was set for before.  I must be doing something really dumb here!

[Christopher (Drashna)]

Are the folders in question duplicated? Or unduplicated? 

Also, for the file placement rules, check the "never allow placement on other drives" option

 

As for the Drive Usage Limiter, the "duplication" doesn't mean the duplicates. It means ANY duplicated data.  Since we don't differentiate between original and copy, this setting affects all of the duplicated data. 

[blueman2]

Well, I have continue to battle some very odd issues with DrivePool after years of a stable experience.  It all started when I removed a drive and added a larger replacement.  I have a total of 4 drives:

 

1) SSD OS drive (no change)

2) 2TB drive (no change)

3) 2TB drive (no change)

4) 8TB drive (replaced an older 1.5TB)

 

After replacing the 1.5TB with 8TB, the balancer just went crazy.  I has gone through the process of completely emptying the 2TB drives to zero contents, then filling them back up to about 50%, then emptying them again about a dozen times in the past 3 weeks.  The balancer never stops. It is ALWAYS processing files in some sort of infinite loop.  

 

Here is a screen shot of the main screen.  

 

 

As you can see, it is in the process of emptying the 2TB drives to zero.  When it is done, it will then fill them back up once again.  

 

Here are my other settings:

 

 

Any clue as to what the heck is going on??

 

[Spider99]

i suspect you have conflicting rules on your balancers and they are fighting against each other

 

turn them all off apart from scanner

 

then turn them on one at a time until you see the issue start again - then you have a clue as to whats conflicting with what

 

you dont need all the balancers

[blueman2]

Thanks!  unchecking all the balancing options, and removing all file placement rules, solved the problem.  The issue was, as you said, two conflicting balancers.  The scanner balancer was set to move unduplicated files from any 'damaged' drive.  All drives show fine, but one does have 8 sectors reallocated.  I guess that is enough to mark it 'damaged'?  Stablebit scanner says it is fine and no failure predicted, so I am confused.  

 

There was another conflicting file placement rule and I guess the 2 balancers fought each other back and forth.  I also changed the check boxes on the settings as follows:

 

File Placement Settings:

uncheck: File placement fules respect limits......

Checked: Balancing plug-ins respect.....

Uncheck: Unless the drive is being emptied. 

 

Thanks for the tip!

[Christopher (Drashna)]

I had a feeling that this may have been StableBit Scanner related.

 

That said, the drive is marked as damaged only if the surface scan has detected issues.  This should show as "damaged" in the UI for StableBit Scanner, and it should mention "unreadable sectors".