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Hi Thanks for answer! ECC ram - good idea - will make sure to use such. Current installation will be windows (later down the road might switch to linux and zfz or similar) For now I will go with ECC ram + drivepool + stablebit scanner + snapraid/md5deep (think I will start with trying this one: https://github.com/marcopaganini/bitrot + a bit of scripting to have it run weekly on all drives) Updated Drivepool feature wish * at every write, calculate and write checksum * have a check/scan command that can be run daily/weekly/monthly uses checksums and verifies data integrity /Andreas

Hi Andreas, My question is - how do I protect against silent bitrot The two main risks for silent bitrot are "while in RAM" and "sitting on disk". For the former, ECC RAM for your PC (and making sure your PC will actually support and use ECC RAM in the first place). For the latter, you can rely on hardware (e.g. RAID 5/6 cards, NAS boxes like Synology) and/or software (e.g. for Windows, md5deep for checking, SnapRaid or PAR2/MultiPar for checking and repairs; for linux there's also better filesystems like ZFS or bcachefs; or linux-based operating systems like Unraid which simplify the use of those filesystems, etc). For use with StableBit DrivePool, my personal recommendation would be ECC RAM + StableBit Scanner + either (SnapRAID) or (md5deep +optionally PAR2/MultiPar). And if you have very large pools consider whether to use hardware RAID 5/6 instead of SnapRAID et al. Plus, of course, backups. Backups should go without saying. Question does drivepool secure against "silent bitrot" Not actively. Duplication may "protect" against bitrot in the sense that you can compare the duplicates yourself - with x2 duplication you would need to eyeball inspect or rely on checksums you'd made with other tools, while with x3 duplication or more you could also decide the bad one based on the "odd one out" - but DrivePool does not have any functions that actively assist with this. Question: Does diskpool have a "diskpool check" command that checks all files (all duplicates) and detects corrupted files? It does not. If not - sounds like a great value-add feature - ex everytime diskpool writes a file it also calculates and stores a checksum of the file I would like to see a feature along those lines too. * option to enable: read verification: everytime diskpool reads a file - verifies that read file checksum is as expected You'd see a very noticeable performance hit; regular (e.g. monthly) background scans would I think be better.

Hi I am starting building out my home storage system and learning as I go. Below is my current thinking/question I will use drivepool and with all pool/files duplicated. I will have additional backups (cloud and local) I feel ok against drive-failures, against entire system failing etc. My question is - how do I protect against silent bitrot I know drivepool via integrated scanner will find blocks that are bad. But how do I protect against silent bit flip. I know its very rare. But still - would be nice to know how to protect against it Question does drivepool secure against "silent bitrot" Lets say a file fileA is stored in diskpool and dubplicated on two drives and one of the drives a bit flips, changes value from say 1 to 0. At this point in time I will have * disk1: fileA (correct file) * disk2: fileA (corrupt file) Question: Does diskpool have a "diskpool check" command that checks all files (all duplicates) and detects corrupted files? Question: Next read of file1 - will it be the fileA from disk1 or from disk2? or? Question: Will diskpool detect that fileA is now different on disk1 vs disk2? Essentially * will diskpool detect a underlying bit-root like this? * will it in addition to detect it be able to fix it? If not - sounds like a great value-add feature - ex everytime diskpool writes a file it also calculates and stores a checksum of the file * option to enable: write verification: after write - read both duplicates and verify checksum dispool check command * reads all files (all duplicates) and verifies that checksum is as expected diskpool file read * option to enable: read verification: everytime diskpool reads a file - verifies that read file checksum is as expected * option to enable: read verification all duplicated: everytime diskpool reads a file - reads all duplicates and verifies that read files checksum are as expected /Andreas

I would just like to say that this is fairly disappointing to hear. Though they added limits, a lot of people are still able to work within those limits. And the corruption issue hasn't been present for many years as far as I can tell -- the article in the announcement by Alex is from April 2019, so over 5 years ago. I get the desire to focus resources though, and I'm glad it still works in the background for now. Hopefully there are no breaking changes from Google, and I hope an individual API key is going to have reasonable limits for the drive to continue working. But yeah, switching providers is not very realistic in my case, so I guess I'll use it until it just breaks.

hello yes, easy peasy. get all your data straight and organized within DrivePool. this means remeasuring/rebalancing/whatever so that you have the solid green bar at the bottom of the DP GUI. the point of this is to mitigate any inconsistancy issues that could 'migrate' to unRAID. i have read that unRAID has its own peculiar issues, so i would also take note/screenshots of my DrivePool settings. you never know... and better safe than sorry. you can 'reverse' this process: http://wiki.covecube.com/StableBit_DrivePool_Q4142489 so, basically just show hidden files and folders, Stop DP service, and navigate to the hidden PoolPart.xxxx folders on each of the underlying drives comprising your DrivePool. select all folders/files in each PoolPart Folder, right-click and CUT (do not select copy), and go back up and PASTE into the root of each drive. do this for each pooled drive. when done, reopen DP GUI and go to Manage Pool ^ Remeasure > Remeasure the pool. this should happen very quickly since all your previous data is now absent from the pool and it will all show as 'other.' this will also help ensure pain-free drive removal. REMOVE each drive from the pool (leave all pop-up removal options UNCHECKED (should also happen very quickly). Viola, you are done. i would reboot here. delete the now empty unused PoolPart folders too. a defrag of all drives concerned can only speed up any upcoming tasks with unRAID. i have never used SnapRAID or unRAID, but i imagine you could now delete/format/diskpart whatever the drives you were using as parity for SnapRAID and get busy setting up unRAID. hope this helps

Hey guys, Drivepool has served me well for over 10 years. Unfortunately, I'm moving over to Unraid. Nothing to do with Drivepool itself; it works fantastic. I just can't get Snapraid to work in conjunction with it, and I need that extra layer of backup. So my question is, I do need to evacuate off of the Drivepool one drive at a time, and I don't have enough room to empty a drive, remove it, and then go to the next drive. I was wondering if it was possible to move files directly off of a particular drive's poolpart folder instead? Will it cause Drivepool to freak out in any way?

Martixingwei is correct, you would need to download that entire clouddrive folder from your google drive to local storage and run the converter tool.

I believe currently the only way is to download everything to local and use the converter tool come with CloudDrive to convert it to other mountable format.

Let's say.....Google does change something with the API and my Google Drive is no longer mountable using the StableBit Application(s), is there a way to decrypt the Chunk of Data files in the actual Google Drive folder "Stablebit Cloud Drive" if I use a different program like rclone or Google Drive Desktop for Windows?

Oh, hrrmmm, interesting. It looks like FreeFileSync did the job, but its UI looks like it was done by a madman, so I might try Robocopy next time. That fileclasses link is EXTREMELY helpful. A bit more on the pool reconstruction front. I really needed more than six drive bays to work with, so I bloodied a credit card and bought another Terra. FFS mirrored everything on the old pool to the three new Seagates seemingly fine. Oh, but before that, the Seagates long formatted successfully, so I'm considering them good to go. I'm currently long formatting three of the old pool drives, which'll take another 24 hours. Once that's done, I'll fire-up the second Terra with old pool drives and copy everything over from them to the drives that I'm in the process of long formatting (presuming they pass). Gillware has the drive. I stressed to my contact that the drive should be fine electronically and mechanically, so they shouldn't have to take it apart. I'm HOPING this will lower the cost of the recovery substantially. You would think restoring everything from a simple diskpart clean should be a cakewalk for a professional recovery service, but we'll see. Incidentally, I was looking over Terramaster's line of products and they are all-in on NAS devices, with their flagship product supporting 24 drives. I wish they would offer a 10- or even 8-bay DAS box, but then you're back to needing a beefy PSU. I still intend to take apart the Sabrent assuming it's not a nightmare to do so. That's currently all the news that's fit to print. More to come!

Wonderful, thanx Drashna, and yes, I've learned and already have locations/IDs in the volume names 😄.

For the mount points, at any time that the drives are connected to the new system. Personally, I would recommend changing the volume labels for the drives to match their locations/IDs, so that it's easier to identify the drives. Also, if you're using StableBit Cloud, it should sync the settings for the pool in StableBit DrivePool, and should sync the scan history and settings for StableBit Scanner, on the new system.

So piggy-backing on the original request, I'd like to do the something very similar, but there's an added complication. On my existing system I have a Pool consisting of 10 drives each of which is mounted in a folder on the C drive. I'm comfortable with Shane's method above, but unsure where in the procedure I should handle the creation of mount points on the new system. Any ideas Shane?? Thanx in advance.

Thanks for the info Drashna; I've added it to all my DrivePool PC's & will advise the outcome in due course.

Robocopy already skips existing files (if they have matching time and size) by default; this can be overriden via the /IS (include files with same size, last-modified time and attributes) and /IT (include files with same size and last-modified time but different attributes) switches. See https://ss64.com/nt/robocopy.html#fileclasses for more details.

If this was the case, then it may be that the "SYSTEM" account permissions were changed or corrupted. This accound should have full control on the pool. This is the account that the service runs in, and uses for accessing the pool for balancing, duplication and drive removal. The "forced damage drive removal" option should skip problem files and continue with the removal, though.

For reference, you can manually merge pools, if needed. https://wiki.covecube.com/StableBit_DrivePool_F1655

It might be worth running this on both systems: https://wiki.covecube.com/StableBit_DrivePool_Q7420208

the pool does support adding multiple drive letters to a single disk (well, really, it's windows thing, and is supported). As for the delete/undo, the pool does support the recycle bin, but that depends on the specific settings you have configured.

Okay, my way was gonna be a real PITA, so I'm doing it via the two-pool method. Unfortunately, I don't have enough (current) drivespace to enable duplication, as I'd have to get a second Terra and also stuff it with drives. Maybe in a few months I can buy some more hardware. I was copying over the pool data and it got interrupted in the last few hours. I poured over Robocopy to see how to get it to just copy the files that don't exist on the target pool, but I cannot for the life of me get the switches straight. Can you give me some pointers? Or is there a better 3rd-party copy app I should be using (treecomp?)? nvm, I stumbled across an open-source app called freefilesync that seems to be up to the task. Still, I'd like to know how to do this with something like Robocopy, though. BTW, Gillware said they could look at the drive, but the recovery cost was probably gonna be steep. Ugh.

Hi, I am in a very similar situation so it seemed a good idea to revive this post instead of creating a new one. Since Drive Bender development has stopped, and my Drivebender installation started misbehaving after recent windows updates, I am trying out Drivepool. I have been using Drivebender for a long time with 3 mount points to the pool , and I have somewhat painted myself in a corner doing so it seems. My pool consists of 6 drives and have E: , F: and G: mounts. Many, many files I have created for my job internally refer to folders on those different mount points (2D/3D and video software projects linked to external libraries/files) . I would really like to avoid having to relink each and every asset in those files, so the network drive solution seems like the way to go. But the issue with that is, as far as I am aware, that there is no Recycle Bin functionality. I can not risk losing client files, so this is scary to me. Would there be a possibility to create virtual disks of some sorts and link folders residing on Drivepool to those so that I can Ctrl-Z accidental deletions? I'm guessing Drive Bender does something like that behind the scenes. I don't think it uses Subst (DB allows renaming mounts), and the mount points show up with regular drive icons and have Recycle Bin functionality. As far as I can imagine it could be possible but the issue would be the drive size management? The obvious thing to do would be to only use the network drives so the software can find the files and to use the Drivepool mount for any direct file manipulations. Changing decade old habits is tough though, so if I can find a workaround that keeps everything as before would be great. Thanks for any insight you might have!

Once you've obtained your own API key from Google, the file to edit is C:\ProgramData\StableBit CloudDrive\ProviderSettings.json I also suggest making a backup copy of that file before you make any changes to it. You may then need to restart clouddrive. Per Christopher's post, "The safest option would be to detach the drive, change API keys, and re-attach. However, you *should* be able to just re-authorize the drive after changing the API keys." I suspect 350 Mbps is the best you'll get.

Hi varied, DrivePool will identify the two pools as being different and connect to each of them as two separate pools on the new PC. There is no built-in command to merge pools (yet) but it can be done manually.

Thanx Shane, i just wish their was a video guide in how to go about applying my own API key in this situation. As ive never attempted anything like this before, so dont want to get it wrong and lose everything in the process. Also 350 Mbps download approx i am getting but as i stated i had a 1GB connection. Is their a way to max this out any settings to change in stablebit to improve my speed or is 350 Mbps about the best i am going to get? Thank you for your help

I have 2 different machines using Stablebit Drivepool as I have 2 licenses. I am now building another PC where I will pool all the drives from these 2 PCS into a new PC and I will transfer one of my license to this new PC. What I want to know is that what will happen if Drivepool on new PC sees 2 different pools of HDDs moved from 2 old PCs. Will my pool/s rebuild in new PC? If yes, will it rebuild a new pool with 2 previous pools combined or will it rebuild 2 new pools in new PC? And, if it rebuilds 2 pools can I then merge them to a single pool? Thanks!