PaulANormanNZ

Thanks very much Shane and drashna, I'll plough ahead with that set up now. Paul

Thanks Shane, So the best thing is to Shut the machine down and then make ext drive removal adjustments really perhaps. Then reboot. May look into that indexing thing - which Windows are you on? Paul

Dear drashna, Thanks for that, We've been finding this straightforward, but excellent tool, very useful so far http://freefilesync.sourceforge.net/ is there anything better suited? People should keep an eye on "second hand", buying that way, a decent sized fireproof data safe — may cost less than one external hard drive! So just to clarify please, when using a secondary detachable DrivePool as a backup option... Are there any steps to take in dis-attaching the two hard drives in say Pool "B"? I intend to use "Safely remove Hardware" - then just disconnect each of the two USB drives from the USB 3.0 hub and put them away. To keep things stable, do I need to tell DrivePool anything first, will it try to stop "Safely Remove Hardware" form letting the drives go? Do I need somehow to cause any caches or file buffers to write to the drives first? Can DrivePool do that for me? Or does DrivePool simply respond to the hard drive removals by itself? Thanks, Paul

Thanks again drashna, Yes, exactly. If you plug in/enable one or more the disks from "Pool B" in, it will recognize the disk, and even list the missing disks. As well as show the current contents, in a "Read Only" mode. Once they're all attached, it will list all the contents and set it back to "normal" (no longer read only). I hoped that was what will happen. So my current plan is to have 4x 2Tb in Pool A (file Duplication on), and have a Pool B 2x 2Tb (no file duplication), and Pool C 2x 2Tb (no file duplication). And from time to time reattaching Pool B and Pool C alternatively to do flat filesyncs from Pool A. Which means at any one time (even when backing up which will take a while sometimes - http://ResourceSpace,org multimedia stuff) there is one set of disks with the previous backup which is not attached electrically to anything. Yes! It was my friend's on the same properties LAN as we are on, and unfortunately he lost his computer as well..., the router and all the LAN hubs went crazy, and had to be completely powered off (dis-attached) for a few minutes each. Awesomely we had a virtualbox image of that machine, and backups of his recent database data to help him restore everything on a new Windows 8 pro hyper-v type setup. A few years ago, another friend with more than adequate UPSes and even industrial strength spike protection over his whole his setup, lost absolutely everything throughout his complex (fax machines, phone routers, printers, the works). So I am a great fan of off-line redundant backup! Not at all paranoid, especially with original multimedia type material, it can even be irreplaceable, or very very expensive to get/shoot/photograph again. We were blessed with a cheap, but very worthwhile, second hand fire-proof ( — probably EMF proof as well ), data-safe to put the backup hard-drives in, and may always have one set offsite completely! Thanks again for the necessary information. Paul

Thanks Drashna, So if all the disks of say DrivePool "B" (second pool backing up DrivePool "A") are restored/reconnected to the host machine, will DrivePool "B" automatically be recognized again? Yes well, it was a good UPS that the spike/surge broke through, knocked out one computer and some things attached! So we are looking to off-line redundant back up/archive and the best way of achieving that. Seems sensible any way to have a copy of important stuff that is not electronically connected all the time any way. And having seen how the Federal authorities can shut down a cloud storage situation leaving innocent and genuine people stranded (Mega dot com fiasco) it seems that you can not rely blindly on the 'Cloud' for viable backup - and sensibly need a redundant off-line local hard copy any way

Hi, I am in the middle of facing this question as well. We are about to establish a 4x disk @ 2T ea DrivePool (A). Even given what I am about to write, we are looking at using duplication within that pool A so we'll only have about 4Tb of effective space.. to allow for any single main pool "A" drive failure. However we are also wanting to have off-line backup of the pool. We have been experiencing power surges in our area, one of which knocked out good surge protection and harmed a number of devices! So we have been watching for "on special" prices and now have 4x @ 2T drives available to make a back up. The question is, can I make a separate Pool "B" as a second pool for backup (as in this forum topic) - but can that Pool "B" be not attached when not being Synced to as a pool drive letter, and then only be connected to the host computer when required for syncing? (We have been blessed with a good second hand data safe for the drives to live in while not required.) I saw a Google search result that suggested that direct syncing of each individual disk in the main DrivePool (A) (including hidden folders) one on one for each disk, had once been recommended for StableBit DrivePool. So my question then is, is a second pool (of the four additional disks) say "B" able to only be connected to the host computer part time, as it were, or will that cause too many error messages? Or is it feasible to periodically connect the 4x backup drives and run something like http://freefilesync.sourceforge.net/ for a drive to drive sync backup of each of the four drives in pool "A"? If a sync approach (drive to drive) is followed - are those drive copies able to "drop in" replace their respective original pool disks, should there be a power zapp, or individual disk failure? That could mean that File Duplication would not be needed on the Pool "A" and we could have a pool "A" of 8Tb then? Any advice most appreciated please. Paul