sfalexi

First off, I love this product. It has served me SOOO well. Kudos to the developers! Now on the question. Simple example is I have 3 drives. I want maybe all my movies on Drive 1, and all my TV Shows on Drive 2, and I want 2x redundancy. It's too much information to double up on ONLY drives 1 and 2, hence the third drive. If I were to use file placement rule of Movies on drive 1 ONLY (unchecking the other drives), and TV Shows on drive 2 only (same, uncheck other drives), and then use 2x redundancy and a balancer to balance to equal space, would that mean that drive 1 would have all movie folders intact if I ever needed to browse JUST that one disk? And would it cause the duplicates to be spread over the other two drives (which is what I would want)? Am I flawed in my thinking here? I'm hoping to rip my new blurays, and know that all the media will be stored on disk 1. The simple reason is that if disk 1 goes bad and needs to be rebuilt, I know EXACTLY what information is lost. If disk 2 goes down I know EXACTLY what information is lost. If disk 3 goes down, I know it's definitely only redundancies that are lost. Instead of guessing that maybe some posters for this or that movie was lost, or maybe some movies, but not others.

Ok. How about this option.... add my SSD as a normal drive. (I have all my file placement rules so ALL data goes to a specific drive, I don't drag anything to the drivepool without having file placement know which specific disk to put it on.. so I can avoid having files created on the SSD unless it's from a game installer) I can point my game installation settings to point to the hidden folder in the SSD, therefore installing all games directly to the SSD. This should also force all games to READ data from the SSD, since something like Steam is looking directly in the hidden folder on the SSD, not my giant drivepool letter. Mark SSD as "unduplicated" in "Drive Usage Limiter", which should keep drivepool from placing duplicated files on it, but drivepool should take the SSD files and duplicate them on one of the other disks? Does this seem like it would work? I do have one OTHER backup idea, but it would require scheduled syncing of folders and I'd rather it change closer to realtime or have everything done with one program (drivepool) instead of two. Lex

Awesome. Answers my questions! Thanks for the SSD Optimizer trick. I'll look into that as my drive gets fuller (it's still about half empty, but I'm starting to upgrade to 4k blurays and I know that's gonna start to fill it up more). I appreciate it!

To put it simply, I have a file placement rule that my Plex movies that I rip go to Disk 2 of a three disk pool. If I put file duplication on, will it always put my "original" copy that I drag into the plex folder on disk 2, and THEN duplicate it elsewhere? Second question, any way to 'rebalance' so if Disk 2 (my movies disk) is carrying some duplicated files from disk 1, it will move those out of the way (maybe to disk 3) to accommodate new movies I want to put on disk 2? This would still allow those disk 1 files to be duplicated, and still give priority to my file placement settings of where to put my movies. But it'd require it moving ALREADY duplicated files. Thanks! I also have another question, but it's totally unrelated so it's in a separate thread. Lex

I'm looking to add my gaming SSD to the drivepool to take advantage of the duplication (in the event of some wierd SSD corruption, I still have latest game data and don't have to redownload). Is there a way to add the SSD to drive, prevent it for being used as a drive to store duplicate data, and also ALWAYS force Steam or U-play or whatever to read/write from the SSD, and not try to "read stripe" and read/write files from the duplicated portion which is on a WD Red? Thanks! I also have another question, but it's totally unrelated so it's in a separate thread. Lex EDIT - How's this for a possible solution.... a little convaluted... but hear me out.... Add the SSD to the drivepool. Uncheck duplicated and unduplicated in Drive Usage Limiter, therefore (if this does what I think it'll do) keeping any files being written to that drive unless I manually go to the hidden directory and write the files myself. Then point Steam, U-play, and any other programs to the direct path (through the hidden directory) of THAT drive, not to the pooled letter. Therefore forcing them to access the SSD directly... but the contents of the SSD ALSO are viewable, and therefore able to be duplicated, by the larger drivepool? Does that seem like it'll work?

Had to redo my computer, Flexraid is no more (wasn't super thrilled with it anyway), so I'm reorganizing data across my media drives I'd like to keep subfolders together as a "package". I have over 500 dvds/blurays, so I have to split my movies across drives. So to keep it with a simple example, here's the scenario.... I've turned off all balancing features and all plugins. I've placed movies A-M on drive1 and N-Z on drive2. Then startedthe pool, and moved the folders into the hidden pool.xxxx folder.. Lets say I buy a new X-MEN movie, which comes with some extra features. I use my bluray ripper to a usb harddrive, create a folder "X-MEN", with many subfolders for the special features. To avoid drivepool splitting the subfolders, if I copy the topmost "X-MEN" folder directly to the hidden part of drive2, even if it means my pool would be unbalanced, does it keep it all? DESIRED END RESULT: Worst case scenario, disk array fails, two drives at once. I can keep my list of movies in text or excel format, and know that I'm missing ALL the data from X-MEN and need to re-rip everything, not just missing maybe half the special features. I'd know this cause the XMEN folder would be completely missing, making it easy to identify what is gone and what is not. Alexi

Had to redo my computer, Flexraid is no more (wasn't super thrilled with it anyway), so I'm reorganizing data across my media drives I'd like to keep subfolders together as a "package". I have over 500 dvds/blurays, so I have to split my movies across drives. So to keep it with a simple example, here's the scenario.... I've turned off all balancing features and all plugins. I've placed movies A-M on drive1 and N-Z on drive2. Then startedthe pool, and moved the folders into the hidden pool.xxxx folder.. Lets say I buy a new X-MEN movie, which comes with some extra features. I use my bluray ripper to a usb harddrive, create a folder "X-MEN", with many subfolders for the special features. To avoid drivepool splitting the subfolders, if I copy the topmost "X-MEN" folder directly to the hidden part of drive2, even if it means my pool would be unbalanced, does it keep it all? DESIRED END RESULT: Worst case scenario, disk array fails, two drives at once. I can keep my list of movies in text or excel format, and know that I'm missing ALL the data from X-MEN and need to re-rip everything, not just missing maybe half the special features. I'd know this cause the XMEN folder would be completely missing, making it easy to identify what is gone and what is not. Alexi