[How long does drive removal process take?]

On 8/17/2021 at 2:42 AM, Umfriend said:

Why not simply power down -> disconnect from sata ports -> connect to SAS? I am assuming it is an HBA in IT-mode.

Otherwise, if you must, it is easier to use the Drive Usage Limiter. Uncheck both Duplicated and Unduplicated for the drives you want to empty, then hit rebalance. The big advantage is that no files will be placed on the other HDDs that you want to empty. When using Remove, some of the 1st HDD may be written to the other 3 HDD you want to empty and that is a waste of time.

Yes, I have a RAID adapter and all my drives are running in JBOD mode.  Since I was removing 4 drives, I was concerned that there would be a chance that a given file might exist only on those drives and not be duplicated elsewhere.  I felt the safest was to let Drivepool de-allocate the drive and move any unique data elsewhere.  But, I did not think about disabling the balance on all 4 drives... I am sure I moved data multiple times.. sigh.  It took a little over 2 hours to get them all out of the pool.

[How does the balancer work]

I have several drives that appear to not be being used in my pool.  I think I have everything set correctly.

[Does this tool provide any actual cloud storage or ....]

Does it simply provide access to my existing cloud.  I have a 1 TB Google drive and I thought this would provide me with a secondary storage area.  However after playing with it, it appears that it only creates a link between my PC and my existing GDrive.

[How long does drive removal process take?]

I have 4 x 10TB SATA drives that I am upgrading to SAS.  I started the removal process on one drive that had 618 GB of duplicated data and 400 MB of other.  Once this process began, the duplicated dropped almost immediately to 139 GB and the Other jumped to 490 GB.  After about 30 minutes the process is only at 0.7%.  How long can I expect this drive to take?  And will it slow things down if I start the other 3 removals to run simultaneously??