Tardas-Zib

Is there a way to manually trigger a consistency check with DP 432?  It was in the old 1x version for WHS 2011, and if nothing else it gave a nice warm fuzzy feeling to press it from time to time.

Hi all,
 
Newbie question. The machine is a media server, running 5x 3Tb internal SATA drives, and 2x external USB2 drives.
 
Its very obvious when the USB2 drives are being used in the pool, as they are so much slower. Can Drivepool be told (or is it smart enough) to only use slower (ie USB) drives for duplication, instead of using them for 'serving' duties?
 
cheers

This was a WHS v1 to WHS 2011 upgrade (new machine (old one failed)) and had everything running by early Saturday Morning.  I set the duplication (folder) to match what WHS v1 DE.
 
DrivePool has been running pretty much non-stop (maybe 4-5 reboots) and I'm only at 16.4%.(Picture below). It was suggested that this proccess should only take hours, but at this rate it's going to take a VERY VERY long time.
 
13 Drives (mix between 1,1.5 and 2 TB.
 

 
EDIT:
 I forgot to mention, when I had to reboot, I noticed DrivePool started at a much lower % ... Like 4 and then maybe 8, etc..

Hi all,
 
I have DP2, full duplication of just two 2TB drives. I need to replace one of them (rising sector allocation error count).
I could just:
1. Remove on of the drives from the pool (how would DP deal with duplication if one of the two is removed?)
2. Remove the drive from the server
3. Add new drive to the server
4. Add new drive to the pool.
 
However, I get the feeling that removing takes some time for DP to process and adding a new one may take a very long time (in background, whatever checks it does etc).
 
So, I am wondering whether it would not be quicker to:
1. Copy all data from pool to a third non-pooled drive (already present in system)
2. Delete all files from pool
3. Perform steps 1 to 4 above
4. Copy all data from third non-pooled drive to pool
5. Delete all (copied) files from third non-pooled drive.
 
The _only_ disadvantage I can see is that I would be deleting shared folders and I am not sure whether those would be reinstated (although, I could of course just delete the contents of those 12 folders).
 
Total size of unduplicated data is about 600GB.
 
Any advice?
 
Kind rgds,
Umf

As the question implies, I would like to know if the process of creating a drive pool can be easily reversed. DP does a great job of letting you create a pool and add drives to it. What if I just want to reverse that process?
 
I know I can remove drives from a pool, but I don't think that's the same thing. If I remove a drive, DP has to go through all kinds of rigmarole to move the data to the drives remaining in the pool. What about just moving the files & folders to where they were on the same drive before the pool was created and deleting the DP related files & folders? I would think this could be done a lot more quickly than removing a drive. Possible?
 
Does deactivating a licence do this?
 
Alternatively, is there a way to simply delete a pool?
 
What about shutting down Stablebit DrivePool Service and reformatting the drives that are in the pool? Maybe I could just move the files in the hidden folder up to the root and delete the pool related files manually?

Posted this under hardware, since I do not suspect that drivepool itself is the issue. Hope this is correct.
 
I have 2 identical servers running drivepool, but 1 server started to slowly behave badly. Issue is that when copying from a source to that server, I am getting more and more CRC errors and transfer speed varies from 100MB/sec to 5MB/sec (sometimes network connection is even dropped). I use Terracopy to transfer files.
 
Now I am kinda lost where to start/continue troubleshooting.
 
What I did till now:
- clean inside and cards
- checked Sata cables
- swapped LAN cable to server
 
I do not suspect the NIC since read speed seems OK. Also switch an router are OK, since the other server is on the same hardware and woks flawless.
 
I am using a Supermicro AOC-SAT2-MV8 in that server as opposed to a RocketRaid R2220 card in the other. Could that be the issue? Can I simply switch cards (have a spare Rocket Raid somewhere), without moving files from the attached drives. Or is this not possible? I mean simply pull out the one put in the other, restart server.
 
On 3 of the 18 drives I have some SMART errors, does not look all to serious, but could this be part of the issue?
 
Memory test? Have not done that yet. What will this accomplish? Just now swapped the memory against a spare one I had lying around, and issue remains. So memory is not the issue.
 
Any other ideas?
 
Thanks for any help.

Just upgraded my HP EX495 cpu/mem and os to WHS2011.   Been testing Drivepool and noticed that with system drive, there is always a C:/ partition and a D:/ partition.  when I add the D:/ partition to the drive pool there is no option to hide it.  When I add the other 3 drives the option to hide is available.  
 
I should see the following:
C:/ OS DRIVE
E:/ DRIVEPOOL
 
But this is what I see
 
C:/ OS DRIVE
D:/ when you click and open it has serverfolders but nothing in them even with most of D:/ being used
E:/ DRIVEPOOL
 
Why is there no option to hide D:/?  Is it because it's a partition on the system drive?  Can I just remove the drive letter?
I removed the drive from the pool after a lot of access denied errors, followed the wiki guide got it finally removed, went to re-add and noticed that in fact I had not overlooked the option, the option is not there.
 
Can anyone speak to this?
 
 

Hi all,
 
Scanner is showing 2504 Reallocated Sectors Count on one of my drives. The message became apparent to me three days ago. The number of affected sectors has not rissen. Should I be concerned (alread)?
 
Kind rgds,
Umf

Ok... so it feels like Murphy's law over the past weekend. I run a Server 2008 R2 box with 3 VM's currently one being WHS 2011. I had a drive failure in my pool... Ok not too bad... most my folders have duplication turned on. (I didn't have duplication on the client backup folder because I also back my PC's up with Crashplan). I also have Crashplan backing up my important folders to an external hard drive for the server. I told it to remove the drive and it it starts to check the duplication, but after leaving it overnight and returning to see only 6% I checked the drivepool task and no I/O bytes were increasing any longer. I resarted the full server and it starts again, but kept dieing around 3.5%-6%. So I turned all folders to no duplications and after and hour I had to pool back to 100%. I thought I would turn duplication back on folder by folder, but this still kept freezing at a low percentage. In the mean time my main PC gives a BSOD and my SDD drive dies. So since my client backups was not duplicated my full backups are now incomplete. Crashplan saved me for the User folder. I still have a hope of rebuilding my client database. I am going to try and image the failed hard drive and pull files off, but I am not crossing my fingers.
 
So throughout this ordeal with this slowness and the drive not duplicating I thought I would move it over to the host since Drivepool is supported on server 2008. I did this and it found the pool and quickly loaded checked the pool and went to 100%. Now trying to save my client backup I wanted to offload them to my wife laptop temporairly. About 170GB total. I started the copy and soon realized now it kept slowing down to nothing being copied. It would not give an error message, but on the drivepool and laptop nothing was being copied, but if I restarted the service it would start again. It got me thinking. I have an addon SYBA SY-PCI40010 PCI SATA II card. Currently only one 500Gb hard drive is connected that is in the drivepool. The rest are connected through the mother board. I moved the 500Gb over to a motherboard connector since I had an open slow from the failure. Now it has been copying flawlessly. I am very frustrated at this point... Is this Syba card not stable??? I mean Server 2008 R2 is not giving any errors from the SATA card. With all this happening it is making me want to buy a whole new Intel mobo... maybe my AMD isn't compatible... Any ideas.. sorry I have been such long winded.
 
Hardware:
AMD Phenom II X4 840 Processor
Mobo: GA-880GM-UD2H
16GB memory
2 x WD 320GB raid 1 for OS and VM's
Samsung 2TB - drivepool
Seagate 1TB - drivepool
Samsung 500GB - drivepool
Seagate 2TB - external crashplan storage
WD Red 3TB (on order to replace failed drive for drivepool)
 
 

Hi,
My set up is WIndows 8.1 as a HomeServer and I purchased DrivePool to pool my shares from 3 drives (2TB,2TB, and 3TB).  I did this and all worked fine.  I then had issues I could not fix with Plex Media Server and had to reinstall WIndows.  On reinstalling DrivePool I noticed the PoolPart folders on each of my drives but know they weren't hidden as normal.  These are from the previous installation as adding files directly to these does not add the files to the DrivePool.
These folders when you open them look empty but take up over 4G.  When I try to delete them I get a message saying I need admin permission.  I am Admin and I've taken ownership of all drives too.  When I try to move the folders I either get an error about admin permission with regard to moving folder System Volume Information or the same about a folder called IndexerVolumeGuid.
 
Everything works ok but I want to delete these old folders. OCD I think.
I've even tried deleting them by booting a Live Linux usb but that refuses to mount the disks in question. Dont want to format as the disks have a lot of data and it would take forever to move it.
 
Please can someone tell me how to delete these folders.
 
Thanks Finchy

Hi Guys,
I hope you can help me.
 
I was working on rearranging my server and moved a couple drives to different ports. Somehow I ended up with them showing on both pooled and non-pooled locations. Anyone know how I can fix it? Please see screenshot.
 
Thanks,
Taylor
 
 

Disks configured on a HP SmartArray P800 S.M.A.R.T. status no being reported?  Any suggestions?

I have my drives set to scan every 30 days in the Scan settings. However, all of my drives have not been scanned since I last manually did them in November. Is there something I should enable/disable? I'm looking thru the options and can't seem to find anything but maybe I'm overlooking it. I'm currently running the latest Beta 2.5.0.2968 as well.

Hi!!
I'm using Drive Pool and I had add another 3Tb HDD to the pool but now the pooled drives disappear, pool works perfect with all drives and the new one too, but when I open drivepool no one disk appear in the pooled drives, I attach a photo.
What the problem is?¿

Hi new Drivepool user here with a question please
 
HP N54L microserver with 1x250gb (WHS2011 o/s default drive) and 3x2TB Seagate drives used in other bays running latest version of DP, file duplication is enabled so the pool drive is last drive.
I would like to install Server2012 R2 Essentials as default o/s.If I just remove the 3x2TB drives and install 2012R2 Essentials and Drivepool to the 250GB drive can I just slot the 3x2TB drives back in after the install and 2012 will recover my pool.Is it that simple?
 
TIA
 
DracUK

Ok, so reparse points have definitely been driving me nuts lately. I was planning on releasing the StableBit DrivePool 2.1 BETA about a week after the 2.0 final with reparse point support, but it's still not out and it's because of reparse points. I've been trying different architectures over the past few weeks and none of them panned out as expected.
 
But today, I believe that I've finally got something that will work. It will support all of the various kinds of reparse points, it will be super fast and stable.
 
So what are these "reparse points" you may be asking?
 
Well, reparse points are the underlying file system technology that enable a whole suite of functionality. Mainly they are used for creating symbolic links, junctions and mount points.
 
Essentially it's a way to redirect access from one file or folder to another. You may be wondering if I'm talking about a Shortcut? No, confusingly a shortcut is not a reparse point.
 
So how many ways does Windows have to redirect files / folders?
 
A lot. That's the problem!
 
Here they are off the top of my head:
A shortcut - A special file that is parsed by the Explorer shell that really links to another file somewhere else (as in a Start menu shortcut).

Most people are probably familiar with this because it's readily available in the Explorer UI.
  Symbolic file link - A file that points to some other file somewhere else. Confusingly, Windows Explorer also calls these "shortcuts" in the file properties dialog.

A symbolic link can be created by the mklink utility with no options.
  Symbolic directory link - These are relatively new, as they were introduced in Windows Vista. This is essentially a directory that points to another directory somewhere else.

These can be created by using mklink /D.
  Directory junction point - These are very similar to "symbolic directory links", but they were available prior to Windows Vista. Again, it is essentially a directory that points to another directory somewhere else. Some people make the mistake that a junction is only capable of pointing to another directory on the same volume, and that's not the case.

These can be created by using mklink /J.
  Mount point - Mount points allow you to designate a directory that will point to another volume. These are typically used to "mount" a number of drives as directories under some other drive letter, thus saving drive letters.

These can be created from Disk Management.
  File hard link - Yet another way to make a file point to another file. However, this method can only be used to point a file to some other file on the same volume.

These are created using mklink /H.  
Yes, that's a lot of ways that you can redirect files / folders in Windows. Try Googling these and you can see the confusion that ensues as to what the differences are between each.
 
So what is the difference between all of these?
 
Well, instead of pointing out the pros and cons, I'll tell you how each one of them works under the hood and you can decide for yourself:
A shortcut - This is the most "user friendly" way of creating a file that points to another one. Even the name makes sense, "shortcut", imagine that. It's readily available from the Windows Explorer menus and works entirely in user mode. A special .lnk file is created that the user mode shell knows how to parse. In Windows Explorer, an icon with a little arrow is shown to you to let you know that this is really a shortcut.

However, as far as the kernel and file system are concerned, there is nothing special about the .lnk file, it's just a regular file.
  Symbolic file link - Sometimes called a "symlink" or "soft link", this is a system that redirects one file to another, purely in the kernel. It involves some special metadata that is stored with the "source link" file that points to the "target destination file" and requires coordination between the file system and the Windows I/O Manager.

This system uses what are called "reparse points".
  Symbolic directory link - This is exactly the same thing as a symbolic file link, but it works on directories. The reason why I separated the two is because symbolic directory links were not available prior to Windows Vista and they must be created differently.

However, the underlying technology that enables this is exactly the same. This too uses "reparse points".
  Directory junction point - This is similar to a Symbolic directory link except that it is available prior to Windows Vista and uses an older technique. Technically speaking, the main difference between this and symbolic directory links is that directory junction points always point to an absolute path, while symbolic directory links can point to relative or absolute paths.

Surprisingly, this too uses "reparse points", but not all reparse points are the same. I'll get to that soon.
  Mount point - These are implemented in the exact same way as directory junction points, except that they point to the root of some other volume instead of some other directory.

These are implemented with the exact same "reparse points" as directory junctions.
  File hard link - This is purely a file system construct. Because of the way directory indexes work in NTFS, it is possible to add a file entry to a directory index of a file that already exists under some other directory. Essentially, you can think of the file as being in 2 (or more) places at once. While this is not quantum physics, it is NTFS. Each file has a "reference count" and that count is incremented whenever a hard link is created to it. When the count reaches 0, the file is deleted.

No other kernel subsystem is involved and no "reparse points" exists. This is the cleanest and purest way of making a file appear in 2 places at once (IMO). Wow, and all this works together reliably?
 
Yes, and that's what StableBit DrivePool is trying to preserve. You see, right now the only thing that we support on the pool from the above list are shortcuts. Everything else is not supported.
 
Some people have been requesting the support of file / directory symbolic links and junctions. Those 2 can be used by software in order to create complex directory structures, in order to organize your data better.
 
4 out of the 5 unsupported technologies use "reparse points", so it makes sense for StableBit DrivePool to implement support for them.
 
Ok, so what's a "reparse point"?
 
A reparse point is a Microsoft defined data structure that gets associated with a file or a directory. When that file or directory has a reparse point associated with it, then it becomes a kind of link to "somewhere else".
 
Essentially, when a file system encounters a reparse point, it tells the I/O Manager "these aren't the droids you're looking for, go look here". The I/O Manager is responsible for opening files, so it happily obliges.
 
That doesn't sound too complicated
 
Well, it isn't, except that there are different types of "reparse points" and each reparse point has a different meaning of where to go next.
 
For example:
File / directory symbolic links use a "symlink" reparse point. Directory junction points / mount points use a "mount point" reparse point. Any 3rd party developers can develop their own type of reparse points and their own logic as to how they work. Remember drive extender from WHS v1? Yep, those tombstones were yet another kind of reparse points. Ok, so this is complicated. But will StableBit DrivePool support reparse points?
 
I'm working hard towards that goal, and the reason why I'm writing this is because I believe that I've finally cracked the architecture that we need to support all Microsoft and 3rd party reparse points on the pool.
 
The architecture has these positive aspects to it:
It supports file / directory symbolic links, directory junction points, mount points, and 3rd party reparse points on the pool.
  It is a 100% native kernel implementation, with no dependence on the user mode service.
  It follows the 0 local metadata approach of storing everything needed on the pool itself and does not rely on something like the registry. This means that your reparse points will work when moving pools between machines (provided that you didn't link to something off of the pool that no longer exists on the new machine). Some of my previous attempts had these limitations:
Requires the user mode service to run additional periodic maintenance tasks on the pool.
  No support for directory reparse points, only file ones.
  Adding a drive to the pool would require a somewhat lengthy reparse point pass. The new architecture that I came up with has none of these limitations. All it requires is NTFS and Windows.
 
When will it be ready?
 
I'd hate to predict, but I think that it should be deployed in BETA form in a few weeks.

Lost a drive out of the pool. Totally disappeared. Sent it back to it's maker and they sent me another. I installed it and added it to the pool. Since the entire pool was mirrored I expected it to automatically rebuild the formerly missing drive but nothing is happening. I looked around and could find no option to do so. This is a HTPC so it's kinda hard to work with for this sort of thing. How can I get Stablebit to rebuild the new drive?
 
Thanks

I'd like to hide the drives that are part of the pool.  Is it just a matter of removing the drive letters?

I'm thinking about doing a Nuts & Bolts Google+ hangout in the future. Basically, it would be an open discussion about anything Covecube / StableBit, current or future products, and technology trends (no tech support though).
 
But I'm not sure how many people would participate in something like that.
 
Would anyone like to participate?

Hi, I installed and successfully set this software up (as a trial). I created shares, copied loads of files in etc etc. Everything working well.
 
Remote access of these shares works faultlessly.
 
However, whenever I try and add files into folders within the shares, or create subfolders I receive an error message "Desination Folder Access Denied".
 
Is it due to my software being just a trial, and I have now used up my free trial? If I were to purchase a licence would the error go away? Or is it some other underlying issue?
 
Thanks
 
James

I have a bunch of drives on an IBM m1015 flashed to an LSI9211-8i in IT mode.  Stablebit can not read the SMART data on any of those drives.  But I know it's available, as it can be read in FlexRAID (which I believe uses smartctl) by specifying the SAT device type.  Is there any way to also pick this up in Stablebit?
 
Thanks!
 
EDIT:  I see there are some topics in the compatability forum regarding this.  I will work through those.

Afternoon all
 
I have a number of storage servers - some Windows machines, and some linux-based NAS devices
 
My current solution for centralised access is to use a folder of mounted volumes and directory junctions on my main server eg:
 
C:\Volumes\Recorded TV\Films -> \(a 2TB HDD folder-mounted)
C:\Volumes\Recorded TV\TV Series -> (another 2TB HDD folder-mounted)
C:\Volumes\Music -> \\Buffalo\Music
C:\Volumes\Projects -> \\Buffalo\Projects
C:\Volumes\Documents -> \\ReadyNAS1\Documents
C:\Volumes\Family -> \\ReadyNAS2\FamilyMedia
 
I've then created a fake drive icon which actually points to C:\Volumes so basically I have an X: drive which contains a small list of folders such as Recorded TV, Music, Projects, Documents, and Family
 
It's not quite that simple but you get the idea
 
So the question is, with a single instance of DP on a single Win server, can I continue to use the above method, and benefit from DP's rebalancing including those UNC-accessed network drives?
 

Hi all,
 
I'm looking at using DrivePool to replace my mirrored software raid setup, I'm looking for only protection from one a single drive failure.
 
So I'm assuming X2 duplication will be fine, what I can't find though is the penalty hit when using duplication, IE, I have 4 x 2TB disks, is it a 50% hit or 33% hit (Raid5 style) if I enable duplication (will I get 4tb or 6tb of usable disk space).
 
I also have a 5th 2TB external drive I may look at adding into the pool as well.
 
Cheers,
Matt

I have a Surface Pro and I have a Drivepool set up with two external USB drives.  I have attached those drives via the docking station. I don't dismount drive or anything when I disconnect the Surface.
 
  Will this cause me problems or should it work that way?

I bought two extra drives for a new server build.  I'm not sure if I should set up a new server with the new drives and then start transferring files from the old drives?  Or is there a quicker way of transitioning?  I'm thinking no but figured it made sense to ask just in case.