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I have 14 mixed size HDD's in my drivepool on a Windows 10 Pro x64 PC giving a total drivepool size of about 24TB with about 7TB free space. I use x3 duplication. When I tried to copy approx 465GB to the drivepool over my LAN from another Win 11 Pro PC, windows 11 reported insufficient free space! I also tried copying the same folder to a 4TB HDD, with about 3TB free space, that is a member of the same drivepool with the same error about insufficient free space! All 14 HDD's are reported as 'healthy' by stablebit scanner. Could this be a drivepool issue or a Win 11 issue? Any suggestions would be appreciated.

I haven't heard from Rossmann yet. If I don't get a reply by Wednesday, I'll voice call them. I did order the 6-bay Terramaster, which should be here tomorrow. If/when I'm satisfied it's running as advertised, I'll rebuild the pool and copy over what I can. Assuming everything goes smoothly (har har), I'll reinstall everything and restore from config backups, which I've been holding-off on doing until I can figure things out. I really, REALLY hope the Terramaster "just works". Since it only accepts six drives, the power demand should be a lot less than the Sabrent. I'd still like to disassemble the Sabrent to see what sort of PSU it's using. I'm 99.9% sure it's something custom, but you never know until you actually eyeball things. I'll report back in a few days. Wish me luck.

It means Windows at least thinks that they're ok; running the fixes would ensure that they actually are ok. Stopped as in completed without error but didn't move anything? Might need to adjust the plugin's priority and/or the Balancing settings so that the limiter correctly applies?

It's an awful feeling to have when it happens (been there). Best wishes, I hope you get good news back from the recovery request.

I think I'm gonna give up on having a pool. Maybe a computer. I was trying to clear that 18 TB Exos out using diskpart. This Exos has the label of ST1800NM. Another 20 GB Exos that I had bought a few months ago has the label ST2000NM. I was tired, bleary-eyed, more than a little frustrated with all these problems, wasn't thinking 100% straight, and selected the ST2000NM in diskpart, and cleaned it. Problem is this drive had gigabytes of data that was critical to the pool. GIGABYTES. I still can't believe I made such a simple, rookie, and yet devastating mistake. My God. I don't know if any of the file table can be salvaged, as I just did a simple "clean" and not a "clean all", but I've got a recovery request into Rossmann Repair Group to see if they can do anything with it. I know there are some tools in the wild that I could probably run myself on the drive, but I don't trust myself to do much of anything atm. I should never have thrown money at an AM5 system. I also probably should've stayed away from the Sabrent and anything like it. Instead, I should've done what any sane person would've done and assembled a proven AM4 or Intel platform in a full tower and attached the drives directly to the motherboard. Yeah, the cable management would've been a nightmare, but literally anything would be better than this. My goal of staving-off obsolescence as much as possible has instead kicked me in the teeth while I was already lying prone in a ditch. If, by some miracle, Rossmann is able to recover the data, I'm going to take a long and hard look at my PC building strategy. Hell, maybe I'll throw money at a prebuilt or one of those cute HDMI-enabled NUCs that're all the rage. I just know that I'm exhausted and am done with all of this, at least for the time being.

Hmm. It's very kludgy, but I wonder: Pool X: enough drive(s) to handle backup cycle workload. Duplication disabled. Pool Y: the other drives. Duplication (real-time) enabled. Pool Z: consists of pools X and Y. Folders in File Placement section set so that all folders EXCEPT the backup folders go directly to Y. SSD Optimizer to use pool X as "SSD" and pool Y as "Archive". Balancing settings to un-tick "File placement rules respect..." and tick "Balancing plug-ins respect..." and tick "Unless the drive is...". Result should in theory be that everything except the backup folders (and any files in the root folder of Z) get duplicated real-time in Y, while backups land in the X and only later get emptied into Y (whereupon they are duplicated)?

I've checked the advanced permissions for the pool as well as the hidden poolpart folder on the problem drive, they look just like the ones in your example images in your linked thread. So does this mean my NTFS permissions are OK? Nothing happened! I clicked "balance" and it ran for a few seconds then stopped! *EDIT* Seem it was a permission issue in the end! I followed the guide at https://wiki.covecube.com/StableBit_DrivePool_Q5510455 and this fixed it, I was able to remove the drive!

Yea, I couldn't find any way other than making a new drivepool. Anyhow, I have an idea what's going on, not positive. The drives in that pool range in size from 6TB all the way down to 500GB. As the pool fills up, those small drives run out of space unless the balancing plugins are set up right. I found that I had most of the balancing plugins deactivated for ??? reason. I activated ORDERED FILE PLACEMENT, and put the larger drives at the top of the list. That should fix things. I think using the SSD optimizer is another way to solve the issue. Another option (that I don't like) is to set my backup software to limit backup files to a maximum size, maybe 25GB each.

I think that's not currently possible. It does sound useful and you might wish to submit a feature request (e.g. perhaps "when setting per-folder duplication, can we please also be able to set whether duplication for a folder is real-time or scheduled") to see if it's feasible?

It's possible a file or folder on that drive has corrupted NTFS permissions (see this thread - it includes fixes). When you used the drive usage limiter to evacuate the drive, were there any of your files remaining inside that drive's poolpart? Because if it at least cleared out all of your files from the drive, you could then manually "remove" the drive by renaming its poolpart and then Removing the now-"missing" drive.

I've been using DrivePool for many years, and I've re-arranged my pool many times. But I'm struggling to remove one of my disks, I keep getting a "error removing drive" message, and when clicking "details" it says "access is denied". I've tried all kinds of things, like checking "force-close any files" and using the drive usage limiter and setting the problem drive to not have anything stored on it, but nothing works! One thing I have noticed, is the error always pops up at the same point. If I do a balance, so the drive fills up again, then try to remove it, it'll go so far, before throwing up the error. At this point, trying again will throw up the error right away. Looking under "disk activity" it seems to be accessing 2 desktop.ini files, and I've tried removing these files, but this didn't help.

I went into the power settings and disabled USB selective suspend. I also made sure the system wouldn't turn off any disks. I just did this, so it'll take a little time to see if it had any results. I actually had no idea the Sabrent had flashable firmware. I downloaded and applied the one linked in that thread. Again, I just did this a few hours ago, so results (if any) may take a day or two to manifest. Thanks for the link! However, after flashing, I did try to do another chkdsk /b on the Exos, but it did the same thing and got jammed at 5%. I'm doing a "clean all" on it now, but if I'm reading things right, that'll take awhile, so I'll leave it overnight. I'm beginning to think the PSU for the Sabrent might be underpowered, as others in that forum also complained about disk drops, especially when it came to SSDs. I have all 10 bays populated with various Seagate and WD spinners, which could be causing issues. If the flash and power settings don't improve things, I'm thinking of ditching it for a 6-bay Terramaster: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0BZHSK29B/ref=ox_sc_act_title_1?smid=A307CH216CTGMP&psc=1 I don't like the fact that the Terra seems to use old-school drive sleds, but I'll gladly accept that hassle if it means I can get the pool back to 100% (I can settle for only six disks in the meantime). I might even take apart the Sabrent to see if the PSU can be upgraded (probably not, but it's worth looking into). More to come!

I have a drivepool with 10 drives set up as drive Y: Everything in Y: is set to 2X real-time duplication. Is there any way, by using the balancing settings, hierarchical pools etc, to set only one specific folder (and its sub-folders) in Y: to NOT use real-time duplication? I don't want to make a new drive letter if I don't have to. The problem i'm having is with drive image backup software such as Hasleo, Macrium Reflect, etc. They often make HUGE files (100GB and up) and I'm finding that I often get messages such as this: ================================================================================== Duplication Warnings There were problems checking, duplicating or cleaning up one or more files on the pool. You can have DrivePool automatically delete the older file part in order to resolve this conflict. One or more duplicated files have mismatching file parts. One reason why this can happen is if something changed the duplicated file's parts directly on the pooled disk and not through the pool. This can also happen if a disk was altered while it was missing from the pool. You can resolve the conflicts manually by deleting the incorrect file part from the pooled disks. Files: \Pool2\Backup\SYSTEM_Backups\JR4_backups\JR4_RDI\JR4_C_NVME__D_SSD_20240409220013_224_4.rdr File parts different. \Pool2\Backup\SYSTEM_Backups\JR4_backups\JR4_RDI\JR4_C_NVME__D_SSD_20240409220013_224_2.rdr File parts different. \Pool2\Backup\SYSTEM_Backups\JR4_backups\JR4_RDI\JR4_C_NVME__D_SSD_20240409220013_224_3.rdr File parts different. ===================================================================================== Since there's no easy way to know what size the completed backup file is going to be, I figure it's best to let Drivepool wait until the entire large file is completed before duplication begins. Is there a simple way to accomplish this without setting up new drive letters, network file shares, etc?

I'm sure you figured it out already... From the images you posted, it just looks like a simple change is needed. The pool called ORICO BOX is fine as is. The one in the first image is not correct. You should have: A pool that has 12TB1 & 12TB2 with NO duplication set. (lets give it drive letter W:) A pool called ORICO BOX with NO duplication set. (with the assorted drives) (Lets call it drive letter X:) Now, drive W: essentially has 24TB of storage since anything written to W: will only be saved to ONE of the two drives. You can set the balancing plugin to make them fill up equally with new data. Drive X: essentially has 28TB of storage since anything written to X: will only be saved to ONE of the five drives. At this point, you make ANOTHER new pool, Lets call it Z: In it, put Drivepool W: and Drivepool X:. Set the duplication settings to 2X for the entire pool. Remember, you are only setting Drivepool Z: to 2X duplication, no other drivepools need changed. What this should do (if I didn't make a dumb typo): Any file written to drive Z: will have one copy stored on either 12TB1 OR 12TB2, AND a duplicate copy will be stored on ONE of the five Orico Box drives. You must read & write your files on drive Z: to make this magic happen. Draw it out as a flowchart on paper and it is much easier to visualise.

Pseudorandom thought, could it be something to do with USB power management? E.g. something going into an idle state while you're AFK thus dropping out the Sabrent momentarily? Also it looks like Sabrent has a support forum, perhaps you could contact them there? There's apparently a 01-2024 firmware update available for that model that gets linked by Sabrent staff in a thread involving random disconnects, but is not listed in the main Sabrent site (that I can find, anyway).

I've resisted saying this, but I think there's a problem with the Sabrent. Which, if true, really screws me. I'm beginning to suspect the Sabrent because I tried long formatting a brand-new 18 TB Exos and it also failed. I started the process in disk management, made sure that the percentage was iterating, and went to bed. Got up and nothing was happening and the disk was still showing "raw". So, at some point, the format failed without even generating an error message. I'll also periodically wake up to a disk or two having randomly dropped-out of the pool. I'll reboot the machine and those same disks will magically (re)appear. I'm currently doing a chkdsk /b on the new Exos after doing a quick format in order to assign it a drive letter (which worked). It started-out fine, but is now running at less than a snail's pace, with chkdsk reporting that it won't complete for another 125 hours. Scratch that, now chkdsk is saying 130 hours and it has stubbornly stayed at 5% for the past two hours. I do have another machine I can try long formats on and will do so, but I'm not sure what that'll prove at this point. I've also tried consulting Event Viewer, but so much data gets dumped into it that I can't really pinpoint anything (maybe that's just me being an idiot). I was really, REALLY relying on something like the Sabrent since it seemed to be a Jack-of-all-trades solution to having a bunch a disks without resorting to a server-style case or expensive NAS. If anyone has any suggestions as to a similar device, I'd love to hear it.

Also, the system Event Viewer can give you an indication for why it failed. In fact, with support tickets, it's one of my first go-tos for troubleshooting weird issues. If you're seeing a lot of disk errors or the like in the event viewer, it can indicate an issue. Also, the burst test in StableBit Scanner can help identify communication issues with the drive.

welcome!

That is the pool drive. The 2048GB size exactly, that is the giveaway, and the "COVECUBECoveFsDisk_____" is just confirmation of that. (that's the driver name). I'm not sure why that happened, but uninstalling and reinstalling StableBit DrivePool can also fix this. And the drive is always reported as that size, in that section of Disk Management. But elsewhere it shows the correct size.

I appreciate this thread. 4tb unusable for duplication and I was looking for an answer and reading through the thread you guys answered about 4 more questions. I guess I'm reviving the conversation by replying. But thanks.

When you say chkdsk, was that a basic chkdsk or a chkdsk /b (performs bad sector testing)? I think I'd try - on a different machine - cleaning (using the CLEAN ALL feature of command line DISKPART), reinitialising (disk management) and long formatting (using command line FORMAT) it to see whether the problem is the drive or the original machine. If I didn't have a different machine, I'd still try just in case CLEAN ALL got rid of something screwy in the existing partition structure. I'd then run disk-filltest (a third party util) or similar on it to see if that shows any issues. If it passes both, I'd call it good. If it can only be quick-formatted, but passes disk-filltest, I'd still call it okay for anything I didn't care strongly about (because backups, duplications, apathy, whatever). If it fails both, it's RMA time (or just binning it). YMMV, IMO, etc. Hope this helps!

What do you guys think about a drive that fails a long format (for unknown reasons), but passes all of Scanner's tests, isn't throwing out SMART errors, and comes up fine when running chkdsk?

Ok! Thank you very much

I recently replaced two 4tb drives that were starting to fail with two 8tb drives. I replaced them one a time over a span of 4 days. The first drive replacement was flawless. The second drive I found an unallocated 2048.00GB Disk 6 (screenshot 1). When looking at it via Drive pool's interface it shows up as a COVECUBEcoveFsDisk__ (Picture 2). Windows wants to initialize it. I don't want to lose data. But I'm not entirely sure what's going on. Any insight or instructions on how to fix it? Thank you. *Update. My Drivepool is only 21.8TB large so i think it is missing some space. Forgive the simple math. 8+8+4+4 is about 24tb and im showing a drivepool of 21.8tb. Thats about what my unallocated space is give or take. *New Update. After a few (more than 2) for windows updates and stuff and letting it balance and duplicate it resolved itself.

Sorry, I didn't mention: Upload verification was disabled. I opened a ticket.