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It's the same for both local and cloud drives being removed from a pool: "Normally when you remove a drive from the pool the removal process will duplicate protected files before completion. But this can be time consuming so you can instruct it to duplicate your files later in the background." So normally: for each file on the drive being removed it ensures the duplication level is maintained on the remaining drives by making copies as necessary and only then deleting the file from the drive being removed. E.g. if you've got 2x duplication normally, any file that was on the removed drive will still have 2x duplication on your remanining drives (assuming you have at least 2 remaining drives). With duplicate files later: for each file on the drive being removed it only makes a copy on the remaining drives if none already exist, then deletes the file from the drive being removed. DrivePool will later perform a background duplication pass after removal completes. E.g. if you've got 2x duplication normally, any file that was on the removed drive will only be on one of your remaining drives until the background pass happens later. In short, DFL means "if at least one copy exists on the remaining drives, don't spend any time making more before deleting the file from the drive being removed." Note #1: DFL will have no effect if files are not duplicated in the first place. Note #2: if you don't have enough time to Remove a drive from your pool normally (even with "duplicate files later" ticked), it is possible to manually 'split' the drive off from your pool (by stopping the DrivePool service, renaming the hidden poolpart folder in the drive to be removed - e.g. from poolpart.identifier to xpoolpart.identifier - then restarting the DrivePool service) so that you should then be able to set a cloud drive read-only. This will have the side-effect of making your pool read-only as well, as the cloud drive becomes "missing" from the pool, but you could then manually copy the remaining files in the cloud poolpart into a remaining connected poolpart and then - once you're sure you've gotten everything - fix the pool by forcing removal of the missing drive. Ugly but doable if you're careful.