Benoire

Yep, things like Xbox games for Windows 10 as well as modern apps. Basically if I want to install Modern Apps and Xbox games from the store, I need to either expose a drive from the pool directly or install to a seperate drive not in the pool? No way around this by the sounds of it which is a shame.

Nope I was wrong, it has defaulted back to my C: drive without me realising. So, can I add MS Store to this and the inability to download and install to the pooled drives. I'm running the latest beta fwiw.

Hi I can run pretty much all my software off the pool, but every time I try to change the default app installation location it errors out (0x801f000f) and does not change. Is drivepool comptabile with the way MS has built apps installation? I know I can bring a folder out from a drive in the pool directly but this doesn't help as I'm looking to spread the load across the drives. Cheers Chris Edit: I had the MS Store added too but this appears to be working and downloading at the moment... Will test once Forza 7 demo has finished.

Alas I've now had to move from Flexraid t-raid as it wasn't compatible with dynamically expanding iscsi drives (or MSFTs own iscsi target server at all). Shame, as I like real time raid. Back using drivepool... So much nicer and easier to use, working out how to you snapraid now in the meantime... Looking forward to anything you guys can do on parity protection now, especially realtime!

Hey Christopher, I meant more of a webgui, I tend to run my servers headless and find a webgui quite easy... I guess I got spoilt slightly by Synology Disk Station Manager 5.1 and wondered if you had considered developing such a thing. I'd happily pay good money for a drivepool/scanner based parity system with webgui and the ability to control HDDs (format, filesystem, etc.) within this interface. Don't really need iSCSI, although the MS solution I just can't get to work with Xenserver 6.5 so I've got Starwind Virtual SAN instead... I'm just throwing this out there for thoughts, Flexraid is good for what it does but I'd discard it in a second for a stablebit product :-)

I'm gonna throw this in here as I can't find a 'wishlist' area :-) I've just moved back to Server 2012 R2 after testing out Xpenology and DSM 5.1. The system is so friendly and easy to use but I had issues with drive expansions and wanted more control over the filesystem used. Now, for parity protection I'm using flexraids t-raid and despite the good transfer speeds (88MB/s on copy including parity drive) the interface sucks and the pooling system is a little flaky. I would love to see a parity system with drivepool integrated that has a decent webui that can do everything... Imagine DSM but running on top of windows (perhaps not the iSCSI bits but that would be cool too), with the ability to add drives, format them and then add them to the pool... All without touching the actual computer management section... Have no idea if this is possible, or how hard it would be but wanted to put it out there as a suggestion :-)

1) I am currently running my drivepool JBOD server from a VM on windows server 2012 R2 on a Xenserver 6.5 Host. I passthrough my HBA as its easier to get SMART details within the VM, but it has no trouble running. 2) Can't comment on Hyper-V as it doesn't meet my needs of PCI Passthrough. 3) Shouldn't be any issues. Most of the type 1 hypervisors have near bare metal speed for VMs. The biggest killer is lack of memory and the host storage devices that the VMs run from, get those right and you'll be fine.

Hi, I've noticed on the roadmap an item called 'Stablebit FileSafe' due for release sometime this year... Any word on what this is? I'd love real time parity protection using drivepools pooling system, rather than snapshot and I'm loathe to move to a competitor to achieve this and wondered whether filesafe was something similar to parity? Just curious more than anything. Cheers, Chris

@Drashna, Email has been sent.

Hi Christopher, They appear to be working fine now, I can physically hear the drives spinning down and up. I'll email the drivers later on when I get home from work as I'm about to leave.

Thanks Shawn, I will give this a go later!

H 4Frame, The card itself has been crippled by LSI as its the lower end of their range apparently. I've allowed unsigned drivers in my install now and have modified the LSI inf to add in a particular but called 'idlepowermanamgement' but unfortunately I'm not sure if this has worked. Got a new supermicro motherboard coming soon which will be final home for the storage system so will try it on a brand new install and see what happens.

Hi Christopher, I have the balancing plugin that fills a single drive at a time as that will ensure that only one or two drives will be spinning out of the pool however ALL drives attached to the SAS card do not spin down at all, only those attached to the motherboard headers actually can use the windows settings. I believe this is because the LSI HBA cards on the whole do not pass through the windows commands to the drives. I know SDParm can spin the drives down as I can hear them physically stop but I have no way of creating a script that basically sets it to it on a set interval. I appreciate that perhaps the users of SAS cards are low but I wonder if this is something that could be looked at? Drivepool plus snapraid gives you a very cost effective parity protection using some very simple programs in my opinion. Stablebit scanner shows active at all times for the drives attached to the SAS cards. Chris

Hi, I have one of those annoying LSI SAS adaptors (9211-8i) that when set to IT mode (jbod) it will not pass the windows spin down commands to the attached HDDs. unRAID got around this by using a spin down command in Linux and I wondered whether Drivepool had something similar. If not, is it something that could be added and that every time a new HDD was added to the pool the spin down ability was added for the new HDD automatically? Would solve my issues immensely! Chris

Perfect, the ip addresses worked. I had been using the hostname but it appears that if connected to a domain it needs the full domain name as well... I was simply trying the host name as that works for Remote Desktop Connection. If I buy a license (I'm trialing this to replace unRAID as I'm unsatisfied with it) do I only need one license for each (scanner and drivepool) and then that will allow me to install and connect as a client from another machine as it appears that I need to activate the second copy of my dc with essentials to do this? How do clients connecting to the licensed installation work?

Cool thanks Drashna. Do I need to do this on both installations for it to work? Is the format also <peer>IP/hostname</Peer>? Thanks, Chris

Hi, Taking a page from unRAID really. Given that windows doesn't seem to indicate if a drive has been spun down, is it possible to add a status of each drive attached to the pool for easy reference? I'm not sure if this is a feature most of your users would want but it might help those that run the ordered file placement plugin to determine energy usage of their servers. Cheers, Chris

Hi, Not sure how to word the topic really, but does scanner support remote connections like drivepool? I'd like to monitor by storage server from a central place, in this instance a Server 2012 r2 with essentials role server. I'm still trying to get to grips with remote connections for drivepool but does scanner support this? Would be great to monitor HDD performance and SMART attributes from a central place. Thanks, Chris

Hi, I've got a Server 2012 R2 primary domain controller running the essentials role and an additional Server 2012 R2 install acting as my dedicated storage server. I would like to access the storage servers drivepool setup from the dashboard but I cannot get it to connect, it only shows the server running on the domain controller. Both servers are accessed using the main domain administrator account and are all tied together an accessible. I presume that remote connections are supported in an active directory environment? If so, any pointers on what to look for to help me fix this? Thanks, Chris

Hey Drashna! Thanks for the reply. I found the normal settings for the pool, didn't realise it was per pool rather than overall... I have to say compared to the other software which didn't work with streaming TS files from MP TVServer to client (the client couldn't find the timeshift files) Drivepool works perfectly, no problems streaming and recording at the same time to the same drive... I even like the way it tells me throughput :-) With respect to how it plugs in to dashboard; it was more of a location thing than a functionality. I like the cleaness of the app, the simple nature of add and go! The other software is quite convoluted in comparison... This is, along with scanner, a definate purchase now! IT would be good to have the ability to move the app to a different location in the dashboard, I quite like the idea of having anything to do with storage in the storage section; keeps it neater! Perhaps making that a user choice would be good? I also found the sneeky way after realising it was actually copying it in to the hidden folder... Moved 500Gb that way, saved me some time!

Hi Otis, and thanks. I've installed Scanner and it is good, I like it :-) So Drivepool doesn't automatically remove any drive letters that have been assigned to a drive when they're added to the pool? I'll have a look at the plugins; the other programme does it natively so I was wondering whether Drivepool did something similar. When it comes to the 'other' data, what is that though? The full file folder/file size on the drive is the same as the unduplicated data (in this case), the 27GB of 'Other' data I cannot find and I don't know what that is!

Sorry, another question... my drive is a 1TB drive and I currently have 561GB unduplicated. This matches the actual folder sizes on the drive. Next to it it then says 27.6GB 'Other' with a grey legend. What is this 'other'? There are no more hidden files than what can be seen already on the drive and its a little confusing. The attached image hopefully shows what I mean.

Hi, I've been using a competing product for sometime, but I like the cleaness of DrivePool. I appear to have come unstuck though with migrating across. I've added a drive (with existing data) to a new pool and I was a) expecting this data to be in the pool and b ) for the individual drive to disappear from explorer. At present, the drive still exists in explorer and the data is not visible in the new drivepool pool. Is this expected behaviour? Also, are there any advanced settings as my dashboard does not show anything at all. I've attached a screengrab to show what options I have available. Is there anyway to rename the pool as well? At the moment, the other product is far more configurable but its dashboard integration is still quite poor; however I do like how it appears in the storage tab as another sub tab... Quite neat I think. Anyway, thanks in advance for a response. Chris Ah hah! So it appears that in order for my new pooled drive to work I have to move the data from the existing drive number to the new pooled drive. Another question; How does DrivePool deal with drive removal? For example the other program allows the removal of a drive at any time (and will use the SMART indicators to potentially shift data from a drive before it packs in) so that you remove it from the system blank... I presume that when you click remove from the pool Drivepool will do this automatically? does it tell you if you don't have any free space to do this operation?