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Thank you! Yes, Veeam is still stuck 10 years ago and can't split. LOL I've had the same issues with Read Striping as well. My issues came when I was read striping on SATA mechanical disks that were hosting VM's. The speed, or lack there of, on the mechanical disks wasn't enough to account for some of the additional overhead required for read striping. At least that's what I theorized. After I moved to SSD, I had no issues read striping. Thanks again!

Sorry, I don't know of any benchmark programs that use user-specified files. I found DiskTT which can use a user-specified folder, but it still creates its own files and it only provides throughput (not latency etc).

1) Is there a way to write files to the disk with the most available space in the pool? DrivePool defaults to attempting this, though if multiple large files start being written more or less simultaneously to the pool there might be an issue (q.v. next answer). 2) File sizes are unknown until the backup is finished. My assumption is that this will be a problem for DrivePool, in that, if it's writing to a disk that only has 4TB free and it ends up being a 6TB backup, then it will fail. Correct? Correct. 3) I'm assuming there's no way to allow "write continuation" to another disk if the current disk fills or hits the % max. Correct. 4) If a disk starts to fill can I set a lower max % , say 50%, and set the balance plugin to run every X minutes? My intent would be that if a disk would start to "balance" other data off the disk and make room for additional write capacity as the current backup being written grows. You can set Balancing to always run immediately upon detecting a trigger condition or only no more often than as small as any integer multiple (including 1x) of 10 minute intervals. Note that (I believe) it cannot balance open files, or at least not files that are actively being written. @Christopher (Drashna)? 5) I would anticipate that we'll use 70-80TB of the almost 100TB that we'll have available to us. We will have headroom, but I'm concerned about managing/maximizing write space. Depending on above answers. I would assume Veeam will start having write failures for larger backup files if there's not enough room on the volumes. Correct. I've had this happen. I take it the enterprise version of Veeam still doesn't support splitting? (I use the standalone agents at home) 6) Can I configure a non-SSD as a cache point, say one of the 20TB SATA volumes, that would then write out to the pool? I'd used it purely as a staging point, rather than for performance. At this point, ANYTHING is faster than our DataDomain's Yes, you can. The SSD Optimizer plugin doesn't actually care whether an "SSD" is actually an SSD or not; it would be more accurate to call it the Cache Optimizer plugin. For example, you might set "Incoming files are cached on drives A and B; when A and B are more than 25% full they empty* to drives C, D, E and F in that preferred order, but try not to fill any storage drive to more than 90% capacity and if any are then move files off them until they are no more than 80% full". Note that you can also make pools of pools (so pool P could consist of pools Q and R which could consist of drives A+C+D and B+E+F respectively) if for some reason you want to have different configurations for different sub-pools. *the SSD Optimizer plugin doesn't have fine control over emptying; when it starts it will attempt to continue until the cache is empty of all files not being written to it. P.S. it is possible to write your own balancing plugins if you've got the programming chops. P.P.S. do not enable Read Striping in DrivePool's Performance options (it defaults to off) in production until you have confirmed that the software you use works reliably with it. I've found some hashing utilities (for doing comparison/integrity/parity checks) seem to expect a single physical disk and intermittently give false readings when read striping is enabled.

Well that makes things easier! Thanks Christopher! Can confirm, just grabbed some external drives and made a Storage Spaces pool with them then added that pool to be part of a DrivePool pool without any problems. However: I've been playing with Storage Spaces in JBOD mode to see what you'd need to do, and it was NOT happy after removing the second-last disk - Storage Spaces removed it without any warnings but then immediately afterward complained that there was an issue, its pool ceased to be accessible and the drives became stuck in a limbo of being removed but not actually removed until I physically pulled them and manually wiped them. Ouch. I would strongly recommend that you have enough spare capacity to empty the last two drives, not just one, if/when you dismantle the old Storage Spaces pool, and the order is apparently "delete storage pool then remove last two physical drives". So all that said, the steps for migrating from Storage Spaces to DrivePool as the pool that Plex, etc, sees should be: Create a DrivePool pool (let's say it's P: drive). Doesn't actually have to have any other physical drives in it yet. Add your Storage Spaces pool (let's say it's S: drive) to the above. Turn off any services/programs looking for S: drive (e.g. your Plex software). Also close the Stablebit DrivePool program and turn off the StableBit DrivePool service. Manually move all your user content in S: drive - so excluding system folders like System Volume Information, $RECYCLE.BIN, etc - into the hidden PoolPart folder that's now in the root of S: drive. For example S:\MyStuff\MyFile.txt would become S:\PoolPart.guidstring\MyStuff\MyFile.txt Swap the drive letters of the two pools via Windows Disk Management (remove S: from Storage Spaces pool, remove P: from DrivePool pool, add S: to DrivePool pool, add P: to Storage Spaces pool). Turn the Stablebit DrivePool service back on and open the StableBit DrivePool program. If it doesn't proceed to do so automatically, tell DrivePool to re-measure the pool via Manage Pool -> Re-measure... so that it accurately reports the disk usage to you. Turn your services/programs that use S: drive back on. Presuming everything is now humming along with the DrivePool pool as your "front end", you could then gradually remove your drives from the Storage Spaces pool and add them directly to the DrivePool pool instead (keeping in mind what I discovered about trying to remove the last two drives - if need be you could just leave the last two drives alone). If/when you're ready to delete the old Storage Spaces pool (i.e. only two drives left inside it and you've got enough spare capacity on your other drives in the DrivePool pool), remove it from the DrivePool pool first and then once that's successful delete the old Storage Spaces pool and only then remove the physical drives from the Storage Spaces pool so they can be added directly to the DrivePool pool. DrivePool's theoretical limit is at least 8 PB (yes, PB, as in petabytes) and only because the Windows OS itself doesn't currently support larger than that (note that some older versions of Windows only support up to 256 TB).

To make sure I understand, I can just add my current drive pool to StableBit, and will that let me push the capped capacity I'm stuck at to the actual capacity, or will I still be stuck at the capped 63 TB capacity because it is a Windows-based storage pool?

Nope, no reset. As I wrote (actually edited my first post a couple of minutes ago - Just saw your reply), I tried to find where the DrivePool app stores the settings for the plugins, so if you could point to where I can perhaps go from there if there's any permissions that's gone wrong or something..?

If you did a manual reset, that will clear the settings. Otherwise, could you open a ticket at https://stablebit.com/contact? This is definitely something tha shouldn't be happening (and can verify that it keeps the settings just fine on my system)

Well, StableBit DrivePool does support adding a Storage Spaces array to the pool. So until you have more disks and are able to migrate the data away, you could add both to a pool.

Specifically, StableBit DrivePool and Windows doesn't need letters for the disks, nor even folder mount paths. These are there to make it easier for users to access the drives. But as somebody with 20+ drives, mounting the drives to folders makes things very easy. And we do have a guide on how to do so: https://wiki.covecube.com/StableBit_DrivePool_Q4822624

Just a heads up, the duplication is essentially copying files from one of the drives to another drive. The speed depends on a number of factors, such as the size of the files being moved (more and smaller files will take longer than less and larger files, for the same amount of data). Also, factors such as pool usage will impact this, since the duplication pass runs in a bachground priority. You can temporarily boost the priority by clicking in the >> button next to the bar. There is also an advanced setting to permanently boost the priority too. https://wiki.covecube.com/StableBit_DrivePool_2.x_Advanced_Settings The "FileDuplication_BackgroundIO" setting controls this.

The only providers supported are the ones listed by the convert tool. Which is currently: Dropbox to local local to file share file share to local

Also, for the larger drives, a larger cluster (or allocation unit size), can help, especially if you're mostly storing larger files on them. More sequential data.

also, if it's not a powered USB hub... even with externally powered usb drives... an unpowered usb hub can behave erratically. And "resmon" can be useful. The disks tab can show you what is open, where, the disk queue length, etc.

Hi. Recently acquired a bunch of SSDs which I added to the pool. One of the first things I did was to configure the SSD Optimizer-plugin so that it wouldn't fill them up entirely. First I selected the drives from the list after clicking on the plugin from the list. Secondly I set the parameters to 75% SSD "fill-up" and "drives", and the "Or this much free space" to about 50 GB. However, after a few minutes, these settings are reset to default again. At first I didn't even notice it on my main server, but as I moved some disks to another puter and added the SSD to the pool there (and set it up the same way), I noticed that it was over-filling it, so I went to check the settings, and found that they were at default. As I had some hardware problems (with both computers) I though nothing of it, and thought that perhaps it was due to reboots that the data hadn't been saved. But now when everything has calmed down and I added the change, and then went back a couple of hours later (No reboot, no errors), I found that it didn't even save it. If I change stuff, press Save (and it exits) and I return to the settings they're still there. But a while longer, maybe 10-20 minutes they're gone. Why the hell is that? It's the same on both puters. I run both on full admin account, no UAC (Disabled via registry) so I think it can't be that. Also running latest update v2.3.3.1505 Another thing that I noticed after a while after I ran the remote control feature a couple of days ago. It stopped working after a while. At first one of the computer stopped listing the other. At first only in DrivePool, then the same in Scanner. One one of the computers which has two NICs list itself 3 times, so something must be screwed up there. Since I'm using a remote desktop it hasn't bothered me much and it's actually quite convenient to have two desktops that shows the DrivePool's control panel. Thought it might be relevant perhaps... Edit: Also tried installing the "DrivePool.AllInOnePlugin.Setup_1.0.0.2_x64.msi" and it's the exact same thing. Some time passes, then it defaults the settings. Thought that I'd might find a config file that handled these settings, but I didn't find any. Haven't looked in Windows registry yet.

Yeah, I meant the Windows Storage Spaces drive pool. I currently have 3x 20 TB and 1x 18 TB allocated to the drive pool as storage space and only using 32 TB at the moment. I don't have any spare drives of capacity to move files between; the remaining drives are NVMe drives ranging between 1 and 4 TB with one of them as the system drive. Due to the space I have, I could remove one drive at a time to recreate the pool in Stablebit and transfer files overnight. Plex is rather fussy about the drive letters if I don't go in manually into the registry to change the location. But if I do the move overnight (or, well, 24 hours) on a day I don't need it, that wouldn't be a huge hit. Backblaze hasn't changed on restoration process if a drive fails.

I'll pre-face this by saying that I think I already know the answers to this, but I want to ask to be sure. Current environment consists of several direct attached storage volumes (all 15K SAS) and several fiber attached storage volumes with mixed 4-7TB 15k SAS volumes, and three 20TB 7200k SATA volumes. In total there are 11 separate volumes with associated shares that are used for backup. My thoughts were to implement DrivePool and combine all volumes into a single drivepool to create a "performance disk" that will have smaller retention sets (3 days) and then longer term "capacity disk" copied to our DataDomain (yuck!) for long term archiving. We have a few backup sets that have primary full VBK files around 6TB with incrementals of around 100gb each, which could have several sets of those depending on retention policy. 1) Is there a way to write files to the disk with the most available space in the pool? 2) File sizes are unknown until the backup is finished. My assumption is that this will be a problem for DrivePool, in that, if it's writing to a disk that only has 4TB free and it ends up being a 6TB backup, then it will fail. Correct? 3) I'm assuming there's no way to allow "write continuation" to another disk if the current disk fills or hits the % max. 4) If a disk starts to fill can I set a lower max % , say 50%, and set the balance plugin to run every X minutes? My intent would be that if a disk would start to "balance" other data off the disk and make room for additional write capacity as the current backup being written grows. 5) I would anticipate that we'll use 70-80TB of the almost 100TB that we'll have available to us. We will have headroom, but I'm concerned about managing/maximizing write space. Depending on above answers. I would assume Veeam will start having write failures for larger backup files if there's not enough room on the volumes. 6) Can I configure a non-SSD as a cache point, say one of the 20TB SATA volumes, that would then write out to the pool? I'd used it purely as a staging point, rather than for performance. At this point, ANYTHING is faster than our DataDomain's Has Stablebit worked with any Enterprise customers on a JBOD solution like this that will help manage this type of scenario? Or, is there a better SOFTWARE (not hardware) product that you would suggest that could do a better job? We're probably another year out from purchasing proper backup storage so I'm stuck using what I have for now. Thanks, Chris

Could you explain what you mean by "Windows Drive Pool"? Do you mean a pool created via Windows Storage Spaces? Something else? What drives (e.g. 3x12TB + 1x10TB) do you currently have and how are they currently allocated (e.g. system, storage spaces, other, empty)? How many additional drives do you have room for? How fussy is your media server about how it sees your files (e.g. you could tell it "everything is stored on drive P and drive Q" with those being your Stablebit and Windows pools, and then just gradually move files between pools)? The method I saw folks use re BackBlaze was to backup each drive within the (Stablebit) pool rather than the pool as a whole, so that if a drive within the pool fails that whole drive can be restored from BackBlaze rather than trying to figure out which files were on it; I don't know if BackBlaze's restore process has improved since then.

Hi, Before I make a purchase of StableBit's DrivePool, I have a couple of questions that on how to migrate from the Windows Drive Pool to StableBit's DrivePool since I hit the lovely 63 TB limit based on the bytes per inode. I currently have four drives hooked up to the drive pool. What's going to be the best way to do this migration without breaking apart the Windows drive pool while maintaining at the very least read access to the files (the drives are my Plex Media Server). Write access would be nice since I also record gameplay and streams to the same drive, but that's not a necessary thing I need. The drive pool is set up as just a single giant disk JBOD setup since I use BackBlaze to keep all my data backed up. That leads me to question 2. Will BackBlaze play nicely with StableBit? Thanks in advance. Ellia

DrivePool's duplication is similar to RAID in that, when enabled, it can protect against one or more drive failures (see this recent thread where I explain that further as well as backup practices). But the short answer is that if one of your drives failed (assuming you hadn't enabled duplication) you'd lose whatever was on that particular drive; the rest of your pool would remain intact - e.g. if you had song1.flac only on drive A and song2.flac only on drive B in your pool, and drive A failed, song1.flac would be lost and song2.flac would be kept. Regarding buying a HDD - it seems like you want/need as little latency and as much speed as possible when working? So I'd keep the HDD separate from your pool of SSDs (maybe in its own pool if you plan to expand) and set up a scheduled automatic backup (whether that's a robocopy script, freefilesync mirror, veeam agent, etc) to happen while you sleep. Your mileage may vary of course.

I have a similar setup on my backup NAS. All non-Drivepool drives are mounted to folders at c:\mount and I can access the drives directly from there if needed.

Thanks for that, Shane I'ii give it ago later on today when I get back from the dentist, I won't do it now at 2 in the morning/ I suppose I will still be able to access it manually if need be & 'Everything' will still index what's in the drives

Hello, I started my free trial last month to manage my music libraries and audio production data using drivepool to combine 5 nvme drives. So far I am convinced that I like the system and will buy it at the end of the trial. Now I am a bit concerned about the backup. I don't really understand the whole thing about "duplicated" files. I didn't understand what settings to tweak Currently my drivepool is 8,18 To (2.36 free). Currently if one of my nvme drives fail, I loose all the data right ? If I buy a 10 To 3.5 HDD, what setup would you advise me to do ? Just manually copy pasting the pool folder to my hdd from time to time ? Setting up a mirror raid between the pool and the hdd ? Or some other settings inside Drivepool ?

Windows only supports drive letters A through Z. However, it isn't necessary for a drive (other than the boot, system and pagefile drive, and perhaps CD/DVD drives and similar) to have a letter; drives can instead be accessed by mounting them as folders in another drive (e.g. C:\Array\Drive27, C:\Array\Drive28, etc) and furthermore itself DrivePool can have drives form part of a pool without being lettered or mounted at all. To add/remove drive letters or mount drives as folders in other drives, use Windows Disk Management: right-click a volume and click Change Drive Letters and Paths...

I use 2 x 8 bay DAS's and there is 1 empty slot. As you can see from the screenshot, I am running out of drive letters. If I put in a few USB drives, then I have a full house! What do I do if I buy another DAS? Or I have more than 1 virtual drive? Does M$ revert to numbers after all the drive letters are taken?

Well, we have moved off of 90.2% finally. Now we are at 90.4%. At this rate, it will complete sometime in 2025! When I hover over it does say it is working, I am just not sure why this particular 10% is taking so long. Oh well. Thank you all for the assistance