[Windows 10 CU: Windows default app storage on Pool?]

On 1/9/2021 at 9:07 PM, Christopher (Drashna) said:

You could also do this with StableBit CloudDrive, actually.  And while that may be a bit of self-promotion, it has the advantage of breaking the storage files into chunks, so that the drive doesn't have to fit on a single disk, as it will for a VHD(x) file. 

Do you suggest we use CloudDrive, have that store the image on Drivepool?

 

[Windows 10 CU: Windows default app storage on Pool?]

On 10/1/2020 at 9:17 AM, kachunkachunk said:

Hey gang, I searched around and wanted to see if I could find the best topic to reply to, rather than submitting a new thread. But I can do that if preferred.

TL;DR - there's a decent workaround:
Create a virtual disk (.vhdx / dynamically sized) on your Drive Pool via Windows Disk Management, format it as NTFS with a 4K cluster size, assign it a drive letter, then install your apps to it.

Longer version:

1. From my understanding from this, the EFS implementation in Windows produces far too many unreasonable hurdles for filters and other filesystems to interoperate with Windows Store Apps (inclusive of Xbox Games Pass content). Among other things.
    
2. The EFS... stack? also makes the assumption that the filesystem's cluster size is 4KB. So if you're using something other than that, it leads to update errors eventually, even if you seemingly had no issues downloading and installing store apps originally.
   From Googling the original error code, it appeared that it was somewhat common on cloud gaming service VMs, as they often deploy with disks formatted with >4KB cluster sizes, which is the root of this archaic issue. I had the same errors on a Storage Space formatted as NTFS with 16KB sectors (all before I moved to Drive Pool!). Sidenote - I don't know why that was the default allocation unit size, but by the time I discovered this, there was no way I was going to evacuate the filesystem to reformat it. My guesses are that it's due to volume size (20TB), or simply because Storage Space defaults are that way out of some memory or I/O management efficiency.
    
3. So, the workaround that seemed to work for everyone was to create a virtual disk:
   1. Open Disk Management in Windows.
   2. Select a Drive Pool, or another desired volume to store your virtual disk.
   3. Under the Action menu, click Create VHD.
   4. Follow the simple steps to create and size the disk.
   5. Locate the new disk in Disk Management (at the bottom, probably. It'll have a blue icon).
   6. Initialize the disk (likely GPT), then create a new Simple volume. NTFS, 4096-byte allocation unit size (4K clusters). Optionally give it a label, assign it a drive letter.
   7. [Edit: 2020-10-15] Create a scheduled task to auto-mount your .vhdx file on startup. I used the steps documented here: https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/138629-auto-mount-vhd-vhdx-file-startup-windows-10-a.html
   8. Finally, start using the disk. In the Xbox app, go to Settings -> General, then under Game Install options, specify your new virtual drive's letter under "Change where this app installs games by default."
   9. Go start downloading and installing games. In the Apps & Features settings page, you can also right-click and move preexisting Xbox/Store Apps if you need to.

Thanks! I was almost ready to ditch the whole thing with my new build but this keeps the drive pool viable.
I did have to install hyper-v for Mount-VHD to work. (Unfortunatly Mount-DiskImage did not work)