SkOrPn

I'm a huge Asus fan, probably on my 30th Asus mobo. Back between the mid 1990's to about 2010 I was rebuilding the PC two to three times a year and sometimes more. About the time AMD 64 came around I was building a new system every other month practically and very few times did I venture away from Asus. Yeah I had a few Gigabytes, DFI LanParty's, and several others (I even had TWO ABIT BP6's overclocked at one time), but for the most part I am an Asus guy. This mobo I'm on now is my second Rampage III Extreme and its been super rock stable for me. I write my own BIOS's for it just so I can keep it up to date. I only have a i7-930 but it runs happily at 4ghz so even today still see no reason to upgrade. Not until Haswell-E anyway. OH, I just had an idea, I will probably not do anything to my server for now and just use this Asus mobo I have now. It has 9 SATA ports directly on the PCB and a 10th on the rear I/O panel. I cant imagine 8 ports not being enough for this family. Sure speeds will be limited but one day there will be SSD's that are affordable and still work on SATA II. And if not at least I have four PCIe 2.0 x16 slots I can utilize with a LSI card  

Well I finished installing new drive and new DrivePool installation.
 
What I did was copied all the data from the server to a new hdd that was big enough (2TB) through the network. I then removed the two drives that were already in the server (1.5tb & 1tb) cleaning them up and wiping them. I put the new drive (2tb) with all my data back into the server along with one of my other drives (1tb) that was empty and freshly formatted. The other drive (1.5tb) will go in tomorrow once it is finished with its Surface Re-initialization Write operation.
 
So, I have this at the moment.
A: Pool (A:ServerFolders)
C: SSD for OS (NOT part of the Pool)
D: 2TB = 75% Full (Pooled Drive)
E: 1TB = 100% Empty (Pooled Drive)
 
I then installed DP, I selected both those drives as part of the Pool. Everything great so far. I then noticed that the Pool (A:) instantly showed 1.55 TB free space (should be almost 2.73tb and empty) but when I went inside nothing is there, no folders. So, I then used the Dashboard (WHS2011) to re-create missing ServerFolders into the A: Pool. After the new folders were re-created I then simply "CUT/PASTE" the data from the large 2TB into the newly created A:ServerFolder/xx. About 7 folders in all. All the folders that had small amounts of data say 20gb here and there went smoothly and quickly but the large folders 1.2TB says it will take 12 hours to move the data. Is this correct? It only took me an hour tops (if that) to transfer over the network this 1.3TB, but it now needs 12 hours? Isn't the data pretty much on the same drive anyway? Since auto balancing will not take place for another three hours (2AM) am I going to be safe or will DP think I am running out of space? I think it says I have 2.57 TB of total space but only 1.55 free.
 
I also accidentally hit the Balancing button (hey it said it was not optimized) before the cut/paste operation finished (just now as I type this). So not only is Explorer trying to cut/paste 1.2TB of data which it claims will take 12 hours, DrivePool is also trying to balance everything, lol. Will it take 12 hours to balance also? I assume as the data moves from D: to the Pool A: it will continuously balance? Normally when you cut and paste it is a fast operation.
 
I am going to leave it to work all night but I thought I would ask here before I slip into bed if I did everything alright. I'm sure I am OK but if I did something bad please let me know. Thanks
 
Rod
 
EDIT: Ok maybe its Ok. In the time it took to write this post it went down to 7 hours estimation. Stupid windows explorer lol

Hello guys/gals, and HAPPY NEW YEAR... almost!
 
Ok, let me just dive right in here. I have a WHS2011 Home Server that has been working flawlessly for this family of six for several years now. I recently decided to add another 2TB drive to the system but also decided that I want to Pool these drives instead of having three separate drives. Here's the current config below.
 
3ghz Intel Quad-Core
4GB Ram
Mobo w/ 4 Sata II Ports
 
Port 1 = SSD for OS
Port 2 = 1TB (Full) (Samsung F3 7200 RPM)
Port 3 = 1.5TB (Half Full) (WD Green WD15EADS 5400 RPM)
Port 4 = 2TB (RAW)(New Drive) (WD Green WD20EADS 5400 RPM)
 
I want to format the new 2TB GPT + NTFS and move all the ServerFolders off the other two drives and onto the 2TB, and then wipe them clean with Hard Drive Sentinel to re-initialize the surface area. They are both heavily used and I want to make sure they are still 100% healthy. Once I finish that I will have the below situation for a new DrivePool install.
 
Port 1 = SSD for OS (C:)
Port 2 = 1TB (RAW) (D:)
Port 3 = 1.5TB (RAW) (E:)
Port 4 = 2TB (Full w/GPT+NTFS)(New Drive) (F:)
 
Ok, here's what I want to know.
 
1. Will DrivePool do the formatting of the other two RAW drives, or should I initialize them myself on Windows 8.1 and format them NTFS?
2. If DrivePool does the initialization will they become GPT or MBR drives? I read somewhere that WHS2011 does not support GPT. Is this true and does DrivePool make this a non issue? Or do I need to patch my system somehow and/or initialize using MBR?
3. I use Bittorrent Sync on all devices, from all 5 computers in the house to all two of my Android devices. That way anything I do on my computers or Android devices are instantly Synced to my WHS without any further input from me. The Sync folder for Bittorrrent on the Home Server is placed within the ServerFolders, that way I have instant access to files that change on my Android on any computer in the house, and from any media player in the House. However, this Sync folder is a physical location on the 1.5TB drive (E:). Will DrivePool work for a Syncing app such as Bittorrent Sync? Can I preserve this setup and still have automatic Syncing to the Pool?
4. The new 2TB drive is an Advanced Format Drive using 4K (I believe), but the other two drives are older 2009 models and not using Advanced Format (I think). Does this pose a problem?
5. Should I install DrivePool before or after the re-initialization of my older drives? Should I have it installed before I place the drives back into the system?
6. If the WHS Dashboard does not support Partitions larger than 2TB, how is DrivePool getting around this limit or will I see multiple Partitions in the Dashboard? This last question really has me confused because in the end all I want is one ServerFolder with 4.5TB of storage space available to all client accounts on the Network.
 
I am almost ready to turn the Server off and get going on this so any help for this new user would be fantastic. I can't wait to get started using DrivePool. Thanks
 
Regards
Rod
 

If they're "cleaned", as in uninitialized (such as running diskpart's clean command), the DrivePool will partition and format them.  If the disks are just unformatted/RAW, I'm honestly not 100% sure. But it sounds like you're talking about "clean" disks. As for initializing them, it depends on the size. 3TB drives it formats as GPT, but less than 2TBs are formatted as MBR, IIRC.  As for the WHS not supporting GPT, that's for client backups. I used SBS2011E for a while, which was near identical to WHS2011, and it used my 3TB drives as GPT with absolutely no issues.
I haven't used BitTorrent sync, so I'm not sure.  But it shouldn't have any issues with DrivePool, as far as I'm aware. Nope, DrivePool is file based, not sector based, so there should be absolutely no issues with the formatting of the disks. Either or. See above. You can have DrivePool installed without a pool without any issue. 
This is a misconception. The backup feature of WHS2011 does not support volumes larger than 2TBs. That means it can't back up 3TB drives or larger. This is a known limitation of the Windows Server Backup feature, that the dashboard uses. As I have said above, I used SBS2011E for a while, and had no issues. Well, I only backed up my system disk, and that worked fine. However, you cannot backup the pool directly. You would have to back up the pooled disks.
I think I've answered everything here. If I haven't, or if you need clarification, don't hesitate to ask.
 
Regards