Tardas-Zib

I just downloaded the evaluation version of scanner and drivepool. The first thing that I noticed is that my performance was impacted when I was watching movies. Every 10 minutes or so, or when there was a scene in the movie that was demanding, I got stuttering. I tried several of the throttlig options, including turning it off until 2:00am in the morning. The only thing that fixed the stuttering is removing the addin. I really like the features of the scanner, in that it let me know all of the capablities of my drives, but the stuttering is not a good thing. Are there any other settings that I might try or is this just the way that it works?

This is definitely off-topic
I have two WHS2011s on my network - they back one another up.
 
My client PC is connected to Server 1 and I connect to it using the dashboard as normal.
 
Is it possible (and if so how) to connect to Server 2 via its dashboard from my client PC.
It seems difficult as I can't find a way to setup a dashboard link to point at my second server.
 
Thanks for any help
 

Stablebit Scanner is reporting filesystem corruption on my C:\ drive, while Windows chkdsk says there are no issues.  I had it do the boot time scan as well to repair any issues and the scanner persists in saying there is filesystem corruption (but no media errors or SMART issues).
 
One thing probably unusual about the configuration is that I formatted the drive with 16KB clusters to match the SSD page size.  Would that somehow confuse the scanner?
 

I have a rock solid setup with WSE2012 using drivepool.  Only problem is if the client backup folder is in the pool, all backups fail within seconds with the WSS service shuting down and restarting.  Obviously this kills any backup running.  I have read in numerouis forums that storage spaces has a "bug" that will not allow the client backup folder to be in the pool or all backups will fail to start.  The reported error logs, while not very helpful, are exactly what I am seeing..  Except that I am not uising storage spaces, I am running the latest drivepool version.  To test this out, I moved the client backup folder off the pool to a usb drive I just acquired and bam, all backups work first time I click start.  No errors or problems.  I moved the folder back to the pool and instant fail.  I have read her and on the old forum of others running with the folder in the pool and having no problems.  I am not sure if anyone is running Windows Server 2012 Essentials or not, maybe they are all on WHS2011.  But i Thought that Drivepool was compatible with WSE2012.  Has anyone else had this issue?  Any info or ideas would be appreciated, I am backing up 4 computers and the capacity of the pool is much desired.  If I have to get a dedicated 3TB drive to hold my backups and keep it off the pool that will be a drag.  DP works fine for all other uses, media library, photo storage and such, but the backups would be a swwet icing to the cake.  I had the folder in the pool for years with WHS2011.  Help please?   

Hi,
 
just wanted to make sure that Drivepool is behaving like it should.
 
I Installed Drivepool on a WHS 2011 Miniserver, build a pool with one empty 4tb disk. Later i put a second disk with lots of data in the pool. Moved all files into the hidden pool folder and switched on "Enable File Duplication on the Entire Pool".
 
Since then it continues to show me a message that it is "duplicating". It never stopps? Different percentages, yes, but it never says "all files duplicated"? Server runs now 5-6 days and I didn´t put new files on the pool, just messing with shared folders permissions etc..
 
Is this normal?
 

Is there a DrivePool Equivalent to Scanners "RunScanner.txt" system?
 
I'm looking for a way to stop LightsOut from hibernating the server when DrivePool is doing it's thing.
 
 

I've been playing with the two software packages on a variety of OSes for my needs to see what I was going to use and I've been having some problems and have finally narrowed down but am stuck.
 
I had issues with 2012 essentials that were similar but did not do the same test there yet.  The system would not respond well or reboot reliably, I went back to WHS2011 before attempting again.
 
Issue:  drivepool works great and is fast and UI connects every time until installing scanner.  Once installing scanner there are several drives that are reported as missing 4 of 5 drives.  device manager also shows the 4 drives are not present.
 
OS:  WHS 2011 x64 bit with all updates applied (170 or so) prior to installing scanner and drivepool. drivepool 2.0.0.420x64 annd scanner 2.4.0.2929.
 
Hardware: 
OS drive using onboard ICH7 SATA 3 port 4 pool drives (WD 2TB Red) using addonics SATA6 2x PCIe card (Marvell 9230 based) 1 pool drive (WD 2TB Red) using eSATA onboard port (JMicron 36x based) 8GB RAM atom asus ion 5t deluxe From device manager, it appears that the only drive showing up to drive pool is the eSATA one and all the drives on SATA6 add-on card are not found.  Drivepool UI indicates that the re-balance target for one drive is zero data so it is attempting to move that data off.  I guess that is based on a flag from the scanner.
 
Once scanner started up it was scanning 3 drives.  I assume that was because there are three controllers in the system so it could scan three drives at once.
 
scanner log files and folders are empty, nothing to submit.
 
thanks,
derekdal
 
----update----
after playing a bit with it, the issue appears to occur only when scanning one of the drives attached to the 9230 Marvell controller.  are there issues with drivers on that card?

Most of my server folders disappeared after I added an internal drive to my server. Drive letters were reassigned upon restart. After pool reconnected with new drive letter, most folders (some standard, some I created) disappeared in the Dashboard and those showing showed zero size...but could still be reached from the client computers. In the dashboard I tried to re-create and browse to connect to the folders (as they were all still in the pool) but got the error that they already existed so couldn't be done!
 
I tried to download the covecube utility from the wiki to fix, but couldn't save to a share. So instead of using a usb drive I created a new share to download to...and all the missing folders returned! Weird, but hopefully this will help someone else. 

Hi Guys,
 
I have been trying for hours to Balance my Files and Folders. I use 3 x 2 TB Drives in One big Pool (5,46 TB). I wannt that all three drives be used to the same size. Actual i used actual 1,5 TB for my Files and Folders. I wannt that on every HDD is ~500GB. But all i tryed to enter in the Balancing Options makes it more wrong. I think I'm doing something basic wrong. I also have installed the "Ordered File Placement" Plugin (if it helps).
 
 
I would ask you for help. What options do I have to set how to make it work the way I would like it.
Thank you very much!
 
 
Sc0rc3d
 
EDIT: /SelfSolved

Scanner Beta Version: 2.5.0.2968
OS: WHS 2011
 
It appears that the drive description fields are linked to the drive # rather then the Drive Serial #.  So When removing a disk and installing a new one (I guess windows is renumbering them) the description information appears to follow the # and gets all screwed up between drives.
 
 

My security/video system crashed, and I restored it from a WHS backup...  I decided it would be better if I stored the video from the cams on my home server. The security server works on a FIFO delete, the oldest videos are deleted when the disk is nearly full. The problem is, the WHS 'share' will look like about 8TB to the security system, and will not stop until the WHS pool is nearly full.
 
Is there any way to limit the size of a share in Drivepool? Or would it be best to pull a drive from the pool and use it for storage?
 
Thanks,
Larry

Has anyone else experienced the UI hanging? (2.0.0.260)
 
I recently switched to DrivePool, While importing all of the data from each disk into the pool, I turned off balancing to stop it from shifting stuff between disks until I was done. Once all the data on the disks was on the pool, I kicked off a manual balance, the next morning I found the UI hung. according the the image the balancing looked as though is was complete, but I couldn't interact with the software at all.
 
Killed the process, and relaunched - the process starts, but nothing comes up on the screen. Tried a service restart - no change. Reboot - UI was working normally again.
No other problems (aside from the srv2.sys BSODs) for the next few days, until I went ot remove a disk that was shown with a SMART warning. Removal ran overnight, and in the morning - the UI had hung again, the same symptoms as before. Haven't rebooted yet - so I can't access the UI, but I can confirm it completed the removal of the disk from the pool.
 
In both of these cases it was a long running, intensive process that was the last action I took before it hung. I'm fairly certain (but not 100%) that I'd left the UI open for an extended period _without_ running any task, and hadn't experienced a hang.
 
Performance Tab was not expanded at the time of the hang.

I set balancing options to exclude my 3rd pool disk "G:" from duplicated files.  But duplicated files are still placed on G:.  See attached. I have rebalanced and re-measured but there was no change.  I would like to keep this disk from storing duplicated files.  I am using release 2.0.0.420.  Thanks!
 
 
Duplic exclusion not working.pdf

After reading all the online information I am still a little unclear about the how file and folder duplications works.
 
If I have several discs in the pool, say 10.  Now if I set file duplication to 2 x and I set a specific folder (with many subfolders) to 2x duplication too.  Is the result as follows;
All files NOT in the folder are duplicated across any of the 10 pool discs. All files IN the folder AND subfolders are kept on 1 disc and duplicated on another disc. When the size of the duplicated folder exceeds the size of the disc in the pool that it is stored on, what happens?  A) I get a message to say it is full or B ) does it expand the folder over 2 discs (4 discs with duplicate). My objective is to keep some folders together on one disc, whilst others I don’t mind how they are duplicated across the rest of the pool.

Well, this is going to be as off topic as it gets and fairly personal
 
One of my personal love affairs is sci fi short stories, and I love originality. I'm not a big fan of the Sci Fi that's on TV today, but I loved Rod Serling's work on the Twilight Zone. Today, some of the best stuff that I've read online resides here: http://qntm.org/fiction
 
This site is fully programmed by one Perl programmer (named Sam) and features some amazing and mind boggling stuff. I love what he's doing and would like to support him.
 
The stories are absolutely free and the ones that I loved in particular are:
http://qntm.org/difference http://qntm.org/responsibility But all of his stuff is just amazing, especially the ongoing Ra series.

Hi.
 
Maybe I am overlooking it but how do I change the UI Language in DrivePool to English? It got installed in a german OS but I prefer English.
 
Thanks for a hint.

Hi, as a little bit of background, I was using drivepool v.1 on WHS 2011. It was running fine. I then decided to upgrade to v.2.0.0.420 to test it out. Also, everything was good. I then decided to give a try to Server R2 Essentials. I installed drivepool and then transfered 3 hard drives to the new server (D, E, F) from the old server. Opening the dashboard under the drivepool tab, I can see 3 drives labeled E, E, F under pooled drives. Under non-pooled drives is C, D. Trying to add the D drive return an error saying it can't add a drive already added to the pool, which is obvious. My question is why do I have 2 "E" drives instead of having D, E, F drives as pooled and C drive under non-pooled. Looking at disk management all drives are listed as C, D, E, F. Even in the dashboard tab related to folder and drives, they show up as C, D, E, F. All files seems to be there but how do I fix this? The drivepool letter is "S", so there is no interference with the drive letters. 
 
Thanks
 
Edit: I just install Stablebit Scanner and it reports 4 drives C, D, E, F.

Just a hypothetical question as this has not yet happened but I need to understand this so that I can set up correctly.
 
I have a windows 8.1 desktop with 2 x 2TB and 2 x 4TB linked to the SATA connectors on my desktop motherboard and 8 x 2 TB discs connected by eSATA through port multiplier connected to my desktop eSATA connector.  So that’s 12 discs in total and I have file duplication set.
 
Now if my desktop motherboard and/or operating system completely fail, can I just buy a new PC and then plug by pool discs into any SATA connectors available on it, install Stablebit on the PC and the pool will be instantly recognised and usable?
 
What I am asking I guess is whether it matters how the pool discs are reconnected to the new motherboard, i.e. BIOS settings and IRQ info an all that or is this all transparent to stable bit?
 
Thank in advance for any advice

(Tried to post this as a support contact, but the contact web pages produce only an error right now.)
 
With Scanner v 2.4.0.2929 in Essentials Experience VM of Windows Server 2012 R2 Essentials, Scanner completes a scan of a 2TB Seagate drive with no errors, including a file system check, then it starts scanning all over again, and the status still erroneously says that portions of this disk have never been checked for problems. The same outcome occurs when scanning with v 2.4.0.2928 on the host.  Currently, that particular pass-through drive is working okay in DrivePool, and there are not SMART errors or warnings.
 
Earlier, a couple of days ago, the VM started to boot slowly and everything became wonky until I set the DrivePool service to manual.  With DrivePool service off, all seemed speedy and normal again.  But I brought all the DrivePool drives online on the host and ran a chkdsk on each.  On the particular drive in question, chkdsk /f couldn't complete and produced Windows event id 153 warnings.  Also, SMART showed 2 Current Pending Sector Count and 2 Uncorrectable Sector Count. I then ran the Scanner scan on it in the host, and after completion, it said that the file system was damaged and needed to be repaired.  Of course, Scanner then relies on chkdsk to do that (unfortunately, there's little feedback to chkdsk when you go through Scanner, whereas, you do get appropriate feedback when using the cmd line).  (Whatever happened to the Scanner feature to salvage data from damaged sectors or to state that there's no data on the damaged sectors?)  After hours of no feedback and the repair process still looking like it was underway, I stopped the process.  Since then, no performance issues with that drive, no SMART warnings (SMART even shows 0 Reallocated Sectors Count), but Scanner continues to loop the scan as described above.
 
I know the drive is "iffy", but why isn't Scanner working correctly on it?
 
Could use a little improvement in the repair interface through Scanner, which currently leaves the user in the dark as to its progress.
 
Edit: Since the Contact webpage is working today, I created a ticket on this.

(Tried to post this as a support contact, but the contact web pages produce only an error right now.)
 
In Essentials Experience VM of Windows Server 2012 R2, the DrivePool drive letter doesn't show up as a location available for indexing in Indexing Options (see attachments).  The Pool drive letter (X:) does display in Disk Management and Explorer and Dashboard.
As a result, I don't have ability to stream media remotely (yes, I know about Subsonic ) or to add shared folders on the Server drive X: to my HTPC Win 7 libraries ("not indexed" error).
 
I went back to my earlier two VMs with DrivePool installed, WHS2011 (v. 2.1.0.437) and WS2012E (v. 2.1.0.420), and both had the DrivePool letter in the Indexing Options location.  So I don't think this has anything to do with the beta DrivePool version, which seems to have been working great since I installed in WS2012R2E, except for this indexing issue.
 
Is there a way to add the Pool drive letter to indexing or Windows Search locations in the registry . . . . or what?
 
(BTW, I take it that the Re-index option is not in v. 2 of DrivePool?)
 
Edit:  Since the Contact page is working again today, I just made a ticket on this.   Also found that registry entries for Win8.1 (DrivePool not installed) and WS2012R2E have "invalid entries" for DriveTypes in HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows Search\VolumeInfoCache\. Those invalid entries didn't exist for earlier Windows versions. Could that be a clue?

Using BETA
 
When adding the string C:\ProgramData\StableBit Scanner\RunningScan.txt and coping Scanner.Service.exe.config back to the folder and restarting the Service I get a "Side by Side....." Error that refers to this error in the windows application error log.
 
 
and the Service Fails to Start.
 
If I delete the config file, the service will start.
 
I've attached a copy. (Appended with .txt for uploading)
Scanner.Service.exe.config.txt

Last night I see this.
 

 
So following a similar post, I reset (delete everything out of the Program Data StableBit folder) and left it over night to run. Same problem this morning.  Pool is organized but all stats are incomplete and everything greyed out.??
 
 

I use the Everything search program a lot. The CoveFS filesystem doesn't support USN Journals and so Everything cannot auto-monitor the Pool drive, but that's not a problem because I can set Everything to monitor the member drives instead.
 
The only (fairly trivial) problem is that the PoolPart folder names are very long and take up the full "Path" column in the match set.
 
Does it really need to have a huge guid in the name? And can it be changed (by the customer) to use something simpler/shorter? I think I can be trusted to come up with something unique for each drive....
 
Great product by the way. Couldn't believe the price for something so comprehensive. A game changer over the crappy LVM of Windows XP/Vista/7.
 
Many thanks.
 
Steve.

Hello,
 
I am expanding and attempting to move from Drive Bender so I cleared my pooled drives up and placed the data on a 2TB drive, the others I have off to the side to clean up and add later. I then added a 4TB drive to the system and installed Drive Pool. I copied all of my data into the Pool and restarted since I was seeing strange capacity numbers.
 
Upon rebooting my 2TB drive shows up in WHS Add-In for Drivepool as "Missing" and gives me the option to remove it from the pool. I then click over to StableBit Scanner and there are no S.M.A.R.T. errors and the scanner is scanning it stating "The disk is not showing any signs of wear and is not overheating".
 
I can access the drive through WHS Disk Management where it shows Healthy, and even access the file system on the disk. There is no option to reconnect the drive. Is there something I am missing?
 
Kind Regards,
Kevin

Excellent product, I have had it on WHS 2011 for the past week.  
See the attached pdf.  The first pic shows the mouseover info for drive 2 in my pool.  The second pic shows the mouseover for drive 3, which shows no info. (No info shows for drive 1 either.)
Maybe I'm missing something, or it's a bug.  Thanks!