Tardas-Zib

I am currently running WHS 2011 and on the box I have 4 drives, Disk1 is 500gig, Disk2 is 2T, Disk3 is 2T and Disk4 is 2T. All disks are at 98% used and are in Dispool1. I need to update Disk1 from 500gig to 2T. Can I take out Disk2, from the diskpool and insert a new 2T drive and make it part of the pool, do an evacuate on the 500G drive, pull the empty 500G drive and then put the old 2T drive back in have everything recognized correctly?
 My problem is that I don't have any external enclosure and I need to update the space. Are there going to be any issues that I need to be aware of before doing this? or is there some other better way of doing this?

Does anyone here use SnapRAID to create parity data stored on hard drives in DrviePool's pool?
 
What kind of balancing strategy do you use? 
 
I imagine if I use a balancing strategy that move files around between different drives too often, I would need to run SnapRAID to sync parity data more often even if I don't update any data on those hard drives.
 
Thanks.
 

I'm thinking of moving from WHS 2011 to Windows 8.  I currently have a WHS installation using Drivepool with 10 disks connected via 2 Sans digital 5 bay towers in JBOD.  Is there a really easy way to just install the new OS,  connect the towers, install drive pool for windows 8 and have it recognize my shares as they were in WHS 2011?  
 
Can i then uninstall my license and use the license on windows 8?
 
Thanks.

Hi,
 
In the Event Viewer that I look at on occasion, DP 2.x comes up sometimes stating that an Error report file has been saved somewhere (actually, two files at the same time). I don't actually observe any issues with DP. Should I worry and what should I do with the file? I can't actually seem to read/open it.
 
Kind rgds,
Umf

I have an Asus P8P67-M Pro motherboard which has an Intel P67 Express Chipset that is providing me with 4x SATA II (3.0Gbps), 2x SATA III (6.0 Gbps). The motherboard also has a Marvell 88SE9172 chip providing me with 1x SATA III (6.0 Gbps) and 1x eSATA III (6.0 Gbps) ports. I've installed a SYBA SI-PEX40062 which has 88SE9235 chip via one of the PCIe slots which is providing me with 4x SATA III (6.0 Gbps) ports.
 
When it comes to drivers, the Marvell driver that supports both 88SE9172 and 88SE9235 reduce the name of the devices to Marvell 91xx SATA 6G Controller and Marvell 92xx SATA 6G Controller respectively.
 
Initially I didn't have anything plugged into the Motherboard's 88SE9172 ports. I originally installed and ran your StableBit Scanner software with the Marvell 88SE9235 driver set to the windows default built in driver (Standard AHCI 1.0 Serial ATA Controller). Everything worked great and the scanning started on all drives. I could even go to each drive's Disk Details and see the drive's max connection rate and the ports maximum connection rate.  I then decided to update both Marvell drivers to the latest 1.2.0.1039 and connect even more drives. Both Marvell chips use the same driver. After a restart or two I went back to using your StableBit Scanner to continue scanning my drives, but now only one drive on either Marvell chip will scan while the others say Waiting to Scan. If I go the the Disk Details, only an overview is available for the drives connected to the Marvell chips.
 
I now presently have 4x Seagate NAS (ST4000VN000-1H4168) on the 88SE9235.
I now presently have 5x Seagate Barracuda LP (ST32000542AS) on the 88SE9172 eSATA connection via an external 5 bay port multiplier (SiI3826 maybe).
I now presently have 4x Seagate Barracuda (ST3000DM001-1CH166) on the P67 Intel chipset.
 
I've gone ahead and downloaded your DirectIoTest-1_0_5016_597 and run it.
  Using one of the ST4000VN000 and having the Unsafe Direct I/O UNCHECKED using Marvell 92xx SATA 6G Controller driver
 
StableBit Scanner - WMI
SMART Status: Yes SMART Attributes: Yes SMART Thresholds: Yes SMART Error Log: No Power Mode: No StableBit Scanner - Direct I/O
Methods: (Nothing. Methods is completely missing from the results) Identify: No SDD: Yes SMART Status: No SMART Attributes: No SMART Thresholds: No SMART Error Log: No Power Mode: No Using one of the ST4000VN000 and having the Unsafe Direct I/O CHECKED using Marvell 92xx SATA 6G Controller driver
 
StableBit Scanner - WMI
SMART Status: Yes SMART Attributes: Yes SMART Thresholds: Yes SMART Error Log: No Power Mode: No StableBit Scanner - Direct I/O
Methods: ScsiPassthrough,ScsiPassthrough48,ScsiMiniportPortDriver Identify: Yes SDD: Yes SMART Status: No SMART Attributes: Yes SMART Thresholds: Yes SMART Error Log: Yes Power Mode: No  Using one of the ST4000VN000 and having the Unsafe Direct I/O UNCHECKED or CHECKED using Standard AHCI 1.0 Serial ATA Controller driver
 
StableBit Scanner - WMI
SMART Status: Yes SMART Attributes: Yes SMART Thresholds: Yes SMART Error Log: No Power Mode: No StableBit Scanner - Direct I/O
Methods: AtaPassThrough Identify: Yes SDD: Yes SMART Status: Yes SMART Attributes: Yes SMART Thresholds: Yes SMART Error Log: Yes Power Mode: Yes A quick note... If I forget to stop the StableBit Scanner from scanning and I select a disk from the Direct I/O test utility it will just get stuck Querying Disk... and I'll have to close the app and reopen it AFTER I stop scanning drives.
 
I've even stopped the ScannerService and modified the Scanner.Service.exe.config_default lines to:
<CoveNativeSafe.My.MySettings>             <setting name="UnsafeDirectIo" serializeAs="String">                 <value>True</value>             </setting>         </CoveNativeSafe.My.MySettings> without result.
 
One last note... When I installed both StableBit Scanner and StableBit DrivePool I specified a directory of C:\Drives\StableBit\ and both applications ignored that and installed into Program Files instead.
 
So, how do I get this great functionality with the Marvell Driver installed?
Happy to provide additional info and pics if requested.

Hi,
 
I reinstalled Whs2011 and used a set of pooled drives. Drivepool (newest beta version) recognized the previous Pool and started checking. all seemed OK. Now I wasn´t able to move the Server Folders from C: (Samsung Evo) to P:\ (existing pool). I couldn´t see the Pool in the Dashboard/ ServerFolder & Hard Disk tab, but that might be OK because I mounted the pooled disks not with a driveletter.
 
I got the Troubleshooter Software and it created the Server Folders. Great! I can write and read the folders.
 
Now comes my problem. In the dashboard/ ServerFolder tab the free space shows as "unknown" and more annoying, I cant add a new folder in the pool with the "add folder" function in the dashboard. The error message is; the task "Add a folder" did not complete successfully. I have a backup disk not in the pool, and on that one I can create and add folders.
 
I ran the troubleshooter again and reseted all the rights in the pool, but it didn´t help.
 
I hope there is an easy fix, because the next step would be to create a new Pool...
 
Thanks for any hints and advice,
Henning.
 
 

as per title and screen shot
 
also had to use custom name in scanner as it showed "disk drive"  where all the others show the full western digital description


just to add works fine just find it annoying

Hi there,
 
Back with some new troubles 
 
My feeder disk (WD Black 750GB) has a bad sector and some SMART warnings under Stablebit Scanner, so has been marked as damaged.
Drivepool figure that out and start moving the data automatically.
This started 2 days ago, and is not finished yet...
 
I then try something else: I am deactivating the balancer for the scanner, to stop auto balancing; then reboot the server; then click on remove disk under DP.
DP works a while analysing the disks (it refreshes the usage stats), then stops not doing anything.
Checking the logs, seems that some files cannot be moved (check the log file attached).
 
Checking the logs for previous balancing operation, seems that a lot of files cannot be moved because of bad permissions.
Where does that come from?
I am not using the DP disks directly in any way, just through DP; so I cannot have modified the permissions on the DP folders myself.
 
Thank you for any help, I need to remove that disk to send it to WD for warranty.
DrivePool.Service-2014-02-10.txt

I like writing these posts because they give me feedback as to what the community is really interested in. I can see that my last post about the Scanner was not very interesting, it was probably too technical and there's probably not much to add to what I've already said.
 
Well, this time let's talk about StableBit DrivePool. In particular, I'd like to talk about DrivePool beyond 2.0.
 
Controlling Folder Placement
 
I think that I have a few great ideas for DrivePool 2.1+ but some of them depend on the ability to control folder (or file) placement, per pool part. I've kind of hinted at this capability in the thread that talked about taking out per-folder duplication, but I think that I've figured out how we can make this work.
 
What I would like to be able to do in future versions is to give you guys the ability to associate folders with one or more disks that are part of the pool. So that any files in those folders would be stored on those pool parts only (unless they're full).
 
This should be trivial to implement on the file system level, but the balancing framework would need to be enhanced to support this, and I think that I've figured out how to make that work.
 
Theoretically, you should even be able to use wildcard patterns such as /Virtual Machines/Windows* to associate all of those files with a group of pooled disks.
 
What do you guys think, is this worthwhile doing?

I have DrivePool installed on my WHS2011 box and it is running great.  I have three 4TB hard disks in the pool.  I understand that WHS2011 limits the server backup function from reading from partitions bigger than 2TB.  
 
  My question is simply this:  If I were to format each of my three disks into two equal (2TB) partitions, then create the pool from those partitions... would that be wise?  My reasoning for doing this is that I could then use the Server Backup to backup the "poolparts" that I want to further protect to an external drive.
 
 My gut reaction is that this would not be the best solution.  Would there be a risk that "duplicated" folders could end up on the same physical drive, but on separate partitions?  Is there a performance hit for doing this... especially when it comes to balancing across partitions as well as the striping feature?  The software may be smart enough to not have these issues but I don't know for sure.  
 
  If anyone could help enlighten me on the topic I'd sure appreciate it.  Also my apologies if this issue has already been addressed.  I did search for it and came up empty.
 
-Andy

I have a 1.5TB Samsung drive in my DrivePool which Scanner recently found damaged, i.e. 15.0 KB unreadable on the disk (30 sectors).  I was able to recover all the data using the tools in file scan, so after removing the drive from DrivePool, I transferred the drive to another computer and ran Windows checkdisk.  After checkdisk completed it's work, I was notified that the damaged sectors were marked as bad, re-allocated, and the drive was "fixed".  When I placed the disk back in the original system, it still shows up as damaged, even though I when I reran the file scan in scanner it states all is well with the file system now. 
 
I'd like to be able to continue using the drive if it' safe to, but I understand that DrivePool won't utilize a damaged disk.  Is this something I should worry about, and if not, how can I remove or change the damaged label?  The current S.M.A.R.T status on this drive shows all parameters WNL except for a "Current Pending Sector Count" value of 48 or 38.8%.
 
Thanks in advance for any advice!

Hi there,
 
My feeder disk is tired, time for replacement.
I was wondering if any of you were using an SSD as "landing zone".
I was told that SSD are not designed for lots of write operations (typical for a landing zone / feeder), so what do you think? Do you have usage feedback about this?
 
So ultimately, what do you recommend as new feeder disk?

Ok one of my drives picked up a bad sector yesterday. when I logged on to scanner it directed me to check file system to which it found 1 file with 6% damage. ok all's well I have backups and all my server files are duplicated but then it directed me to recover the file to which it has been trying to do very slowly for the last 48hrs what I don't get is why if all my files are duplicated why does not just delete the damaged file and re duplicate the good copy this just seems a long way round to fix the problem.
 
Any thoughts
 
Lee

A bit off the usual topic but I wanted to share this with the community as I've had such good luck with it.  It is MoCA, it stands for multimedia over coax alliance.  Practically, this is an adapter that connects to your router and bridges Ethernet to coax, a second adapter, wherever you need a fast and stable network signal converts it back to Ethernet.  This will work with any coax network, so if your house is wired for cable, it's now wired for 100mbs Ethernet.  The signal is solid, strong and fast.  I stream 1080p from my server in my office upstairs to the xbmc in my living room through several splitters.  Could not get it to work consistently with wireless and now it's as smooth as butter, no buffering, no stutter.  The only thing that seems to be a problem is a cable/coax amplifier between the sending and receiving units.  A little re-wiring for me and it worked fine.  Install is plug and play.  Coax is pass thru the adapter and it has an Ethernet jack out to your device or switch if you have more than on at the location.  Hooked it up and the network picked it up in seconds and I was good to go.  They cost about $45 each, you usually need 2, some devices for example the newer TiVo's and some TV's and Blu Ray players are set up for it already with an internal adapter.  None of my stuff was.    The MoCA trade group is sponsored by some big names in computers, networking and cable so this is no fly by night start up.  Adapters are just coming on line but are available through most major retailers though you have to look for them as they are so new.  Best one seems to be from ActionTec (new version out this year), followed by Netgear and D-link.  Got mine from Best Buy through a marketplace partner for $109 for the pair.  Current network speed being reported is 80 mbs on average, more than enough for high def streaming.  The big plus is the stability of the signal, no blips or anything has been seen so far through online gaming and streaming high def movies over the network.  I am giving the links I used to check this out and order below, this is worth checking out if you are wired for cable, always wanted to have hard wired Ethernet but didn't want to tear up the house, and find wireless a bit lacking.  I use 2 ghz splitters in my cable wiring and the run to my cable modem is kept separate to avoid any interference. 
 
Sorry if this has run a little long and sounds like a sales pitch, but I am really liking these things, they just work and work well.  Plus they saved me from hard wiring my house or having to put up with my wife's rolled eyes every time a streamed movie stops and goes "Buffering".  Check out the links below and see if maybe this will work for you.  Thanks for all the drivepool help I have received here, hopefully this can be a bit of pay back.
 
Dave
 
Links:
 
http://www.mocalliance.org/
 
http://www.mocaisinyourhouse.com/

See the attached photos, the other space size is growing. Every single drive is hidden in the explorer, I only deal with the pool. And I am sure there are no other files outside the hidden drivepool folder on each drive. Any one know what are these other files?
 




Never mind, I think I figured out. It's the virtual disk that is mounted in the vm, drivepool probably couldn't identify it while it is being used.

I'm very interested in drivepool..
I'll start with reading the manual right now..
 
So shoot me if the answer is in there I'll find it later on...
But I wanna know right now, so I know how to plan..
 
- can I add a nas drive to the pool ?
- can I 'share' the pool to other users ?
 
Thanks

is the license valid for one machine ?
or 1 user ?
 
or can I use it on several machines ?
 
same for the scanner license ??
 
 

Hi,
 
I'm finally getting to the point that I would like to upgrade my old WHS v1 to 2011. It's getting long in the tooth and there are some add-ins that I would like to use that are not available on v1. I'll be using the same hardware only I'll be using a SSD drive for the OS that I just bought. The home server is used basically for streaming movies using mymovies, music, file and photo storage. I have already purchased a license for drivepool and scanner. I'm going to follow the wiki on migrating WHS v1 to 2011 using drivepool. After reading it, It's a pretty straight forward process. I have the necessary signed 64 bit drivers for my HBA cards.
 
I want to use v2 of drivepool because I like the features it has, but the only niggle is that it doesn't have full dashboard integration as v1 does. I'd rather use the most current version, and I'm willing to sacrifice full dashboard integration for it. Am I really losing anything else?
 
One thing that I would really like to see is a wireframe view of my hard drives in the dashboard. That's the one thing I'm going to miss about using the disk management add-in for v1. It was nice to be able to easily identify a drive for removal. Will Alex every provide such a feature in the future? I'm not sure how I'm able to identify a drive for removal. How does that work? All my bays are hot swap, so I don't have to take the server down.
 
I've been watching this software for a very long time since he first started developing it.
 
Thanks! :-)

Been like this for hours. What should I do?

So supposedly June 18th is the release of a new pooling software called PoolHd. I wonder how stable there first release will be? Can't be any worst then DriveBender...i hope...

I have discovered something and I didn't know which area to post it in.
 
I have notice when using the dashboard for long periods of time (few hours) that it becomes sluggish.  I didn't think too much of it until this morning, when I realized that I had forgotten to shut down the dashboard and saw that It was consuming almost 1.5 Gigs of RAM.
 
So I started looking at what might be the cause.
 
I have these ad-ins installed:
Advanced Admin Console
Add-in Central
Lights Out
StableBit Scanner and DrivePool
 
When I open the dashboard the Home  tab is active, so moving to the resource monitor found in AAC I see that the dashboard is holding steady @ 149 Megs of RAM Consumption. When I move to the Light-Out Tab, I hold steady @ ~180 Megs of RAM.  If I move to either DrivePool or Scanner, the dashboard memory consumption increases slowly but never stops increasing.
 
The memory is released when closing the dashboard.
 
Is this normal behavior?
 
Stable Version (2.0.2.420) of Drive Pool, and Beta Version (2.5.0.2982) Scanner

I am still in the evaluation phase of drivepool and I first set it up on a test drive to see how it would work. Now, I would like to evacuate that drive and then install a new one. The problem that I am having is with the interface, it should pooled drives and the underneath non-pooled drives, but I cannot expand the pooled drives pane so that I can remove one of the drives. What is the trick to getting that pane to expand???? Here is a screenshot

Got a damaged disk warning, said approx. 8600 sectors (2tb drive) could not be read. Used dashboard to remove it from pool, picked options to force removal and duplicate later. Would I get a warning if there were files that were not migrated or no message?
Thanks

This is W8.1 Pro, with six 4T drives in the media pool.  Two weeks ago, Scanner had finished scanning all drives and pronounced them healthy.  Last week one day I didn't have any content in my media directory and found that all the drives were missing.  Not just offline, but not even showing up in the Windows Disk Manager.  Scanner was unresponsive.
 
I rebooted the machine and all media drives re-appeared.  A couple of minutes later I started the UI to Scanner and noticed on one drive it had found a bad (512b) sector, and as of the reboot had scanned past it about 4 (tiny) blocks.  About that time I received an email from Scanner:
StableBit Scanner Unreadable Sectors Found on "PMSERVER". One or more disks are damaged and have data on them that is unreadable: ST4000DM000-1F2168 ATA Device - 512 B unreadable (1 sectors) Model: ST4000DM000-1F2168 Serial number: W300M44F Case: Server Tower Bay: 2-1 You are receiving this message because you have set up email notifications to be sent to this address from the StableBit Scanner.
 
But it was dated as of the reboot, not when this event occurred several days prior.  During that time, Scanner was (apparently) locked up and media drives were not available.
 
Looking at the Windows Event Viewer, there were several scanner error reports referenced, which I have attached.  Maybe they'll help make some sense of this.
 
--Bill
 
ScannerErrorRpts.zip

I was able to narrow the problem down to a new external drive.  Here's what happened in order:
1) Old external drive died.
2) Booted into system without drive connected.  Removed from drivepool.
3) Added new external HDD. Let Drivepool balance (entire pool duplicated).
4) Upgraded to v320
 
And that's when client backup stopped working.
 
I removed the new external drive today and was able to successfully create manual backups on two separate machines, both pointing at the pool.  The new external HDD seems to be okay, it's passing chkdsk scans (don't have a more complicated way to scan).
 
I'll be happy to share any error logs or anything else if you guys want to tell me where to get them.