Nuts & Bolts Latest Questions

Balancing on or not?

Sat, 04 Apr 2026 08:47:29 +0000

I set up a new pool in my gaming computer yesterday. The pool consist of three drives, 2 M.2 and one SSD. One of the M.2 drives is much faster than the others so I made rules for some of my games folders that they should only be kept on this specific drive. This worked fine for the most part, Destiny 2 was evenly distributed to all three drives despite this but It doesn't really matter since that is not a particularly heavy game.
What didn't sit well with me was that since I turned balancing OFF, I got that recommended to me since it's games and not "data storage", the drives are not equally balanced with files. Is there a drawback to use balancing on this particular use case or should I have it set so it will balance?

delete duplicates

Fri, 25 Jul 2025 02:51:46 +0000

How do I get rid of duplicates keeping only the original file? My backup is (will be) to an offsite copy of all data.

Ignore drive marked as Damaged with virtually no damage

Thu, 26 Feb 2026 16:33:18 +0000

So I have a pile of drives in my pool and one of them is an older 4TB Red. Recently, 8 of sectors totaling a whopping 4kb of data were flagged as bad and the drive was evacuated. I reformatted the drive and did multiple re-checks of it to see if this was the start of a spreading problem, but it isn't and I'm confident the drive is OK for the next while at least. However, if I re-add it to the pool, it won't balance to it because it reports as Damaged by Scanner. I'd like to ignore the Damaged warning on this drive for now unless it gets worse (similar to how you can tell Scanner to ignore SMART warnings), but I don't see a way to do that without telling the balancers to ignore all damaged drives, which I don't want to do. But I don't want to take this drive out of service over 4kb of bad sectors that aren't getting worse.

Is there any way I can have Scanner treat the drive as OK while still evacuating others that go Damaged? Thanks.

Disk Space Equalizer

Wed, 12 Nov 2025 02:08:45 +0000

Does Disk Space Equalizer make necessary adjustments to Balancing rules? Or does it replace it? I was not aware that I may have it and have not looked to see how to implement it/

Thanks

Using DrivePool's Duplication, Drive Usage Limiter & Ordered File Placement for a 3-2-1 Backup Strategy

Mon, 13 Oct 2025 22:45:12 +0000

Right now I have 5 identical drives 4 are used for DrivePool and 1 is used for Parity via SnapRaid, While SnapRaid is "good enough" for media storage and things that I don't REALLY care about / can always re-download I do want to protect my personal / work documents with a proper 3-2-1 backup strategy, I am wondering if using Drive Pool's built in Duplication and Ordered File Placement balancer are what I need to do this job versus specialized backup software.

As I am new to DrivePool and the balancers can sometimes be confusing I am wondering if someone can sanity check my Balancers and double check my 3-2-1 strategy is working as intended and I am not mistakenly overlooking some files or mis-configuring my balancers.

Drive Usage Limiter = I have my normal 4x 8TB HDD Drive Pool set to accept both Duplicated AND Unduplicated data.
In my front panel 2.5" hot-swap bay I have a smaller 1x 500GB SSD set to accept Duplicated data only.

Ordered File Placement = "Prioritize the placement of duplicated files" is checked. Unduplicated is left unchecked.
"Control new file placement and move the existing files into the pre-defined order" is selected.
The top priority on the Duplicated tab is the 1x SSD.

Every other balancer except StableBit Scanner are disabled as not to interfere with SnapRaid.

My /homes/ folder where myself and my family keep our personal files along with anything else deemed to be important is set to be Duplicated.

From there I target the SSD's hidden DrivePool folder using my rclone to my NAS and my cloud provider's cloud sync software.

With the above balancers enabled does that mean at least 1 copy of every important / flagged to be Duplicated will always be on the SSD?
If true does that mean the other copy of the file will also be on one of the mechanical HDDs and thus also protected by SnapRaid?
Does it matter that the SSD (500GB) is significantly smaller than the mechanical HDDs (8TB) in the pool if I expect only a minority of files to be flagged to be Duplicated? IE the balancer won't try to skip the SSD because it is 75% full vs the HDDs which are 25% full.

When I setup Rsync to my NAS to add a 2nd machine does that mean I only need to target DrivePool's hidden folder on my SSD to make sure all my important stuff is on the 2nd machine? Same for the cloud, if I back everything up to a cloud provider can I just target DrivePool's hidden folder on my SSD rather than the individual folders with important files?

Re-appearing drives

Mon, 08 Sep 2025 23:38:07 +0000

I am having an issue with a failed SSD. Drive is failing or failed, the drive has been physically disconnected from the PC, the drive has been removed from the pool multiple times; however it keeps reappearing along with all of it's data. How to I keep this drive gone for good?

I have 8 HDDs plus this ghost SSD in the Pool with my main C:/ separated out. I have my files duplicated but only so that there are 2 copies.

Currently DrivePool states that it is stuck Duplicating at 7.9% and has been there for the past 24 hours.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Keep getting this error in the logs, DrivePool will NOT re-balance .....

Mon, 08 Sep 2025 19:51:10 +0000

"The process cannot access the file because it is being used by another process", unfortunately there is no name provided for the file in question

I've attached the most recent log file ...... hoping someone can help

DrivePool.Service-2025-09-08.log

move disk with data intact from one pool to another pool

Mon, 28 Jul 2025 16:09:33 +0000

Is it possible to move disk with data intact from one pool to another pool? The only active pool will be the destination for the disk. Would be nice to not have to copy off the data, attach the disk then copy back the data. Maybe rename the hidden directory so dirvepool knows you need to attach it to a pool?

Can I attaching a used pool disk to a particular pool?

Thu, 24 Jul 2025 08:16:18 +0000

I am upgrading the server disks. I cannot fit old and new disks in my server (27 disks). The old disks will be used in an offsite backup. I would like to keep the data on the old disks. The copying is faster when done in one computer. If I disconnect the old disks they can be removed quickly from the pool. If I build a new empty pool and connect a couple old disks they jump into the active pool. If I use a small empty disk to start a 2nd pool and again try to connect the old disks they go into the main pool. Pool name doesn't matter. There does not seem to be a way to direct a pool disk to the desired pool.
I am currently doing this by letting old disks use the 1st pool and creating a 2nd pool with empty disks. Then I copy the data. When done I completely remove those diske and do another batch of old and new disks. It will take about 6 days to complete the copy. I will have one odd disk (20tb) that I will need to copy over my Lan.

Selecting which pool the drives should attach to would be a nice feature. Maybe a relocate disk to the desired pool? Maybe eject and attach?

Remove the virus sensitivity or other 'security' theatre?

Sun, 23 Jul 2023 16:33:04 +0000

Sorry, it keeps nagging me about files that need to be copied or moved, and I have my own ways of deciding what's safe and what is not. I seriously do not want file- or pool-managers deciding what is secure or not. Can I bypass this decision-making by this software?

And by the way, all of them are useless false-positives too. But either way, it's not a task for Stablebit Drivepool to be making decisions on content or its value or security.

Please make that optional.

NTFS file id inconsistent over time with no balancing on.

Mon, 14 Apr 2025 03:02:08 +0000

Hello! I've written a program that does checksums for my files on a stablebit drive pool. It uses the NTFS id for the file as an identifier. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/api/fileapi/ns-fileapi-by_handle_file_information?redirectedfrom=MSDN

I notice across scans that the ntfs id for the file is changed, even if no changes were made to the file (file was not replaced either). Is this expected behavior?

My workaround is just to scan the drives directly rather than the pool.

why does stable bit mostly use 2 hdds at a time

Thu, 03 Apr 2025 18:48:15 +0000

i have 8 hdds i would think during task like duplicating or moving large number of files from ssd you could be using many of them at the same time in parallel but they seem to use 2 in series. is that controlled by CoveFs_AsyncCriticalThreads if so why is the default set to 2? i am likely missing something or just wrong if any one could give me more information about it i am curious in the technical side of what is going on

Use both SSDs and HDDs in pool, only use HDDs as duplicate/secondary?

Tue, 21 May 2024 18:31:33 +0000

Hi there,

I currently have a single pool made up of HDDs with 2x duplication. I want to buy a few SSDs and move to a structure where:

1) There is one set of data on the SSDs and a duplicate on the HDDs

2) Any new files are written to the SSDs before being duplicated to the HDDs

3) Any file reads are read off the SSDs

So effectively the HDDs would be a duplicate of the SSDs but not the primary source of data. Is this possible to set up in Drivepool, either in a single pool or using hierarchical pools? If not exactly, then even approximately would do. Thanks

Black window after HDD died

Fri, 28 Feb 2025 21:26:04 +0000

Hi all - my drivepool on Win11 is just showing a black window ever since one of my HDDs died due to a power surge. I can technically use drivepool because when I hover over where the buttons are, I sometimes see popup bubbles giving additional information (e.g. HDD information), but it's not actually usable in a real sense. I raised a ticket via contact us but after a week I've not had a response.

I've tried:

Restarting machine
Repairing drivepool
Reinstalling drivepool
Windows update
Graphics card update
Launching as admin, and compatibility mode for other versions of Windows
Maximizing, moving the window around, minimizing and reopening.

Any help would be MUCH appreciated. I'd really rather not have to reinstall windows, considering its my media server and local LLM server, with a lot of customization...

Set pool as Read-Only on demand?

Fri, 07 Feb 2025 17:18:10 +0000

Is it possible to command DP to set the pool in a "Read-Only" state so that no writes can happen through the pool itself? And to revert this change on command later?
I believe it does this when there is no valid license or a drive is missing. But I am looking to schedule this for specific tasks that need the data to stay static while they run. After these tasks are complete the drive could be set back to a normal state.

NTFS Permissions and DrivePool

Fri, 08 Jan 2021 01:11:24 +0000

Spend long enough working with Windows and you may become familiar with NTFS permissions. As an operating system intended to handle multiple users, Windows maintains records that describe which user owns each file and folder and how much access each user has to those files and folders. These records are kept on the same volumes as those files and folders. Unfortunately, in the course of moving or copying folders and files around, Windows may fail to properly update these settings for a variety of reasons (e.g. bugs, bit errors, power interruptions, failing hardware).

This can mean files and folders that you can no longer delete, access or even have ownership of anymore, sometimes for no obvious reason when you check via the Security tab of the file/folder's Properties (they can look fine but actually be broken inside).

So, first up, here’s what the default permissions for a pool drive should look like:

And now here’s what the default permissions for the hidden poolpart folder on any drive added to the pool should look like:

The above are taken from a freshly created pool using a previously unformatted drive, on a computer named CASTLE that is using Windows 10 Professional. I believe it should be the same for all supported versions of Windows so far.

Any entries that are marked Deny override entries that are marked Allow. There are limited exceptions for SYSTEM.
It is optional for a hidden poolpart folder to Inherit its permissions from its parent drive.
It is recommended that the Administrators account have Full control of all poolpart folders, subfolders and files.
It is necessary that the SYSTEM account have Full control of all poolpart folders, subfolders and files.
The permissions of files and folders in a pool drive are the permissions of those files and folders in the constituent poolpart folders.
Caveat: duplicates are expected to have identical permissions (because in normal practice, only DrivePool should be creating them).

My next post in this thread will describe how I go about fixing these permissions when they go bad.

Replacing A Drive In A Full DAS Bay

Tue, 14 Jan 2025 20:57:53 +0000

Hello,

I currently have a four bay DAS that is populated with four 16TB drives, all four drives (G, H, I J) are in a single pool (F). I have file duplication (2x) and balancing turned on. My understanding is that this creates to copies of every file in the pool. Each copy is located on a different physical drive in the pool. So in theory, if one drive is lost for whatever reason, I've not lost any data.

In the event a single drive in the pool fails and I need to replace it, is the process more complicated than simply power down, replace the drive, power back up and let Drivepool do it's load balancing and duplication with the new drive? Will it automatically detect the drive change and act accordingly, or will I need to manually remove the bad drive from the pool and add the new one?

Or, am I way off base and I need to do something completely different in the event of a drive failure?

Thanks!

Questions around disk spinning, service stopped, Verify after copy

Fri, 10 Jan 2025 19:10:49 +0000

Hello!

I'm testing the application since 2 days now, and I've been reading a lot of documentation and tips on various locations including this forum, reddit, and the manual.

Still I have a few questions that I was not able to find.

1. When I first installed DrivePool, I saw on the GUI settings (on the title bar) an option "Verify after copy".
Since I'm a bit paranoid (probably as a lot of people here), and since I care about my data to some extend, I've enabled this option via the GUI.
Of course I know it will impact the performance a bit but this is not an issue for me right now.
However a few times later, I went into the JSON settings file and I saw the same option, left to the default (false), and not overrided.
So my question is: What is taking precedence here for the same option? Is it the GUI or the JSON setting?
I can already see that the documentation https://wiki.covecube.com/StableBit_DrivePool_2.x_Advanced_Settings could maybe be improved for this setting telling about the GUI option as well.

2. Then since I have 10 spinning disks and 4 NVMe, I tried to play a bit and created a pool only with NVMe, but I noticed all of my other drives were continuously spinning, which was unusual.
And then I found this thread from... 9 years ago! https://community.covecube.com/index.php?/topic/1674-drivepool-service-making-constant-disk-access/
Telling to disable "BitLocker_PoolPartUnlockDetect" option, which I did, and which worked! No disk spinning anymore.
Still I'm a bit sad that 10 years later after the thread I found, someone like me still struggled on that and that nothing was done here to improve the User Experience, like a warning or even a notice somewhere on the doc or the app, telling that the HDD drives will continuously be polled -and continuously spinning- unless the user manually disable this option.

3. Since I had to restart the service for point 2, I've noticed something else.
Even with the DrivePool service stopped (via services.msc), I still had the pooled drive active and could even write files in there, and the file was apparently properly write on a disk. How is that possible with the service stopped?

4. Since I plan to use SnapRAID along with it (along with DrivePool Scanner but haven't tested it yet), can you tell me what would be the advantage of DrivePool duplication knowing that SnapRAID would restore my files back as well?

Thanks in advance!

Drivepool to Linux port?

Sat, 28 Dec 2024 22:23:13 +0000

Will Covercube ever release a Linux port of Drivepool and stable bit scanner?

I would love to use my pool with Ubuntu server or better yet a Drivepool docker setup would be awesome. I know I could move everything over manually but moving 150Tb it would be a major hassle with the way Drivepool stores data and would require me to buy more drives and hardware which I really don't want to do. Thanks in Advance for your time.

Disk duplication, double available space?

Wed, 18 Sep 2024 07:41:48 +0000

Hi Everyone! Reddit recommended me this program, after I immediately got unsatisfied with Windows Storage Spaces. I'm trying to use DrivePool to mirror two 2TB HDDs in cause of one fails in the future. As I understand from the docs, I added the two drives to the pool and enabled duplication. However, Windows Explorer and Disk Management still reporting ~3.6-3.8TB for the virtual drive created by DrivePool. Is it possible somehow to see the actual available space as a one identical drive's capacity in the two disk array "RAID 1"? Thank You!

Where do I find the dpcmd utility?

Mon, 16 Sep 2024 07:56:09 +0000

Where do I find the dpcmd utility? Windows 11.

SSD optimization

Sun, 18 Aug 2024 15:42:21 +0000

I use DrivePool with 6 HDD and 1 SSD. I only have big files often read during 2 hours. I would like to reduce my hdd uses over long period. Is it possible to transfert the current read files from HDD to SSD if not already present ?

driverpool overhead for millions of small files?

Sat, 06 Jul 2024 03:18:16 +0000

Hi, i have been using drivepool for a long time now, very happy with it.
I now have some new requirements which i never had to deal with so i have 2 questions:

first question:
I will have couple of millions of small files, some less than 32kb, some around 250kb, in total it will around 30 terrabytes in total space used, yes it's crazy, but please don't ask why. What i need to know is, how much will drivepool's overhead affect random read performance? It will be a bunch of data blobs and hashes sorted in a couple of subfolders (starting from 00 to zz, the first 2 letters of the hashes of those blobs as filenames) with milllions of hashblobs inside those folders. It will be randomly accessed and traversed and i need it to be as fast as possible. I need it to be at least as fast as baremetal (directly on the HDD) or if possible faster, I think when drivepool spreads those files out over multiple drives i am hoping of higher IOPS and throughput, but that all depends on how much the overhead drivepool will have in such a scenario.

second question:
If i make a VM with a couple of lets say 500Gb vhdx hard disk files stored on drivepool. While the VM is running those files are locked. Can drivepool still balance them somehow while the VM is running?

Thank you in advance!

Ron

Tue, 04 Jun 2024 00:54:06 +0000

Added a new disc to my pool
How do I get it to balance everything out so that there’s files on it?

Duplication at night - how to set particular time?

Thu, 23 May 2024 15:15:03 +0000

I switched off real-time duplication due to bottleneck on USB enclosure, and this should be done overnight. Is there an option to set a specific time for this to happen? I would like it to be done between 02:00 and 05:00 because I have scheduled backups at other times.