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I don't really know. I speculate that MB-SATA may not be designed to be optimal. For instance, I do not know whether they can actually deliver 600MBps on all ports simultaneously. I guess it can be found through Yahoo but not sure. PCIe SATA cards, I have read that they can deliver lackluster performance, as in shared bandwidth dependent on the actual number of PCIe lanes it uses, but never that they'd interfere with MB-Sata. Again, I don't actually know and I am sure that there may be different qualities out there. But really, I think your PCIe SATA card will be fine and give no issues. It should work for your transition. I'd leave the card in the PC once done so that, AIW you need it, you have two ports readily available. The SAS HBA route is one I would recommend if you expect storage to grow as measured by number of drives. For me, it works like a charm and as these are, AFAIK, all made with enterprise servers in mind, I am pretty comfortable about performance, compatability and endurance.

Yeah, it's ... manufacturer fun. SMART really isn't a standard, it's more of a guideline, that a lot of manufacturers take a LOT of liberty with. NVMe health is a *lot* better, in this regards (it an actual standard).

Well, it may be worth testing on the latest beta versions, as there are some changes that may effect this, due to driver changes. If you're already on the beta or the beta doesn't help, please open a ticket at https://stablebit.com/Contact so we can see if we can help fix this issue.

First, thank you for your interest in our product(s)! The default file placement strategy is to place files on the drive(s) with the most available free space (measured absolutely, rather than based on percentage). This happens regardless of the balancing status. In fact, it's the balancers themselves that can (will) change the placement strategy of new files. For what you want, that isn't ideal.... and before I get to the solution: The first issue here is that there is a misconception about how the balancing engine works (or more specifically, with how frequently or aggressive it is). For the most part, the balancing engine DOES NOT move files around. For a new, empty pool, balancing will rarely, if ever move files around. Partly because, it will proactively control where files are placed in the first place. That said, each balancer does have exceptions here. But just so you understand how and why each balancer works and when it would actually move files, let me enumerate each one and give a brief description of them. StableBit Scanner (the balancer). This balancer only works if you have StableBit Scanner installed on the same system. By default, it is only configured to move contents off of a disk if "damaged sectors" (aka "Unreadable sectors") are detected during the surface scan. This is done in an attempt to prevent data loss from file corruption. Optionally, you can do this for SMART warnings as well. And to avoid usage if the drive has "overheated". If you're using SnapRAID, then it may be worth turning this balancer off, as it isn't really needed Volume Equalization. This only affects drives that are using multiple volumes/partitions on the same physical disk. It will equalize the usage, and help prevent duplicates from residing on the same physical disk. Chances are that this balancer will never do anything on your system. Drive Usage Limiter This balancer controls what type of data (duplicated or unduplicated) can reside on a disk. For the most part, most people won't need this. We recommend using it for drive removal or "special configurations" (eg, my gaming system uses it to store only duplicated data, aka games, on the SSD, and store all unduplicated data on the hard drive)Unless configured manually, this balancer will not move data around. Prevent Drive Overfill This balancer specifically will move files around, and will do so only if the drive is 90+% full by default. This can be configured, based on your needs. However, this will only move files out of the drive until the drive is 85% filled. This is one of the balancers that is likely to move data. But this will only happen on very full pool. This can be disabled, but may lead to situations where the drives are too full. Duplication Space Optimizer. This balancer's sole job is to rebalance the data in such a way that removes the "Unusable for duplication" space on the pool. If you're not using duplication at all, you can absolutely disable this balancer So, for the most part, there is no real reason to disable balancing. Yes, I understand that it can cause issues for SnapRAID. But depending on the system, it is very unlikely to. And the benefits you gain by disabling it may be outweighed by the what the balancers do. Especially because of the balancer plugins. Specifically, you may want to look at the "Ordered File Placement" balancer plugin. This specifically fills up one drive at a time. Once the pool fills up the disk to the preset threshold, it will move onto the next disk. This may help keep the contents of a specific folders together. Meaning that it may help keep the SRT file in the same folder as the AVI file. Or at least, better about it than the default placement strategy. This won't guarantee the folder placement, but significantly increases the odds. That said, you can use file placement rules to help with this. Either to micromanage placement, or ... you can set up a SSD dedicated for metadata like this, so that all of the SRT and other files end up on the SSD. That way, the access is fast and the power consumption is minimal.

Hi Just trying out Drivepool and first question i have is Drive letters and what happens when you run out of them I am building a large storage/backup server and its likely i will add more than 20 hdd Just experimenting with 4 hdd plus OS drive - created a pool which is assigned a drive letter but also the four drives that make up the pool are also assigned drive letters The drives were not assigned drive letters before adding to the pool (un-formatted) So what happens when you want multiple pools and have a large number of drives - do you have to use mount points? Currently i am testing on win7 64bit Any pointers or advice would be good Thanks

Yes, you can do that, too. However, I generally prefer and recommend mounting to a folder, for ease of access. It's much easier to run "chkdsk c:\drives\pool1\disk5", than "chkdsk \\?\Volume{GUID}"... and easier to identify. Yes. The actually pool is handled by a kernel mode driver, meaning that the activity is passed on directly to the disks, basically. Meaning, you don't see it listed in task manager, like a normal program.

or not mount them at all appears to work fine as well - swapped to win 10 pro 64bit now - as clean install the mount points were lost but drivepool picked the drives up on reinstall without re mounting them just have the os drive and a test pool working well so far - interesting watching the pool fill up for the first time and turned on duplication half way through a backup job - handled very well by the app its also interesting to see that in task manager the "pool" has no disk activity reported while the underlying disks are running around moving data - i assume this is normal?

StableBit DrivePool doesn't care about drive letters. It uses the Volume ID (which Windows mounts to a drive letter or folder path). So you can remove the drive letters, if you want, or mount to a folder path. http://wiki.covecube.com/StableBit_DrivePool_Q6811286

Thanks Have mounted then and removed drive letters and Drivepool picked up the changes

Hi the individual drive letters are not needed most people give the drives a name like bay 1 bay 2 etc purely to help identify the drives then remove the letters under disk management.