Umfriend

But that is my point, unless I am missing the obvious: One file should never be stored on G:\ _and_ on H:\. A file _may_ be stored on E:\ and F:\. So, total data on E:\ and F:\ should be GE then G:\ and H:\ (because if one dupl;icate of a file is stored on either G or H then the other duplicate MUST be stored on E or F). So, I am looking at E+F (2 HDDs) compared to G+H (2 partitions on ONE HDD).

But then I thought **** it!, these guys don't put out beta's that easily and for now, yep, unduplicated is gone. But now something else seems weird to me: 1. The two 2TB HDDs (E:\ and F:\) show 985GB and 1004GB duplicated (1,989GB) 2. The two 2TB volumes (G:\ and H:\) on the 4TB HDD show 1,016 and 1,018 duplicated (2,034). This seems odd to me as the 4TB HDD should, at most, have one duplicate/copy only. It could be zero as the two duplicates could be on E:\ and F:\. So I would expect the sum of duplicated for E:\ and F:\ to be equal or greater than G:\ and H:\. Ran dpcmd (nice tool although the output structure might be improved somewhat as others have indicated. For instance to be able to import into excel or a database) and it showed no errors so that is nico but still...

I do not like beta builds... COuld it be in the SIV in the root of the Pool or the SIVs on the individual HDDs/Volumes? The former, I would think, could only add to "Other" and "Unusable for duplication", no? The later has a nice .xml on two HDDs, perfectly duplicated that is.

Hi, So I had to rearrange storage a bit and currently it is like this: 2 x 2TB HDDs 1 x 4TB HDD, partitioned as 2 x 2TB volumes. Pool file duplication x2 (no folder duplication) DrivePool version 2.1.1.561, only the default balancers and all at default values. OS is WHS 2011 Statistics show 17.8MB as Unduplicated. I do not understand why any data should not be duplicated. I would have thought all would be duplicated and that I could be assured that any file would at least be stored on one of the two 2TB HDDs (as it should not duplicated on 2 x 2TBB volumes of the single 4 TB HDD only). I have tried re-measuring.

Is your Pool organization 100%? If not, then you can instruct it to re-balance. Perhaps you experience this behaviour because you do not have automatic balancing and, though I am by no means certain, I think you need balancing for the Balancer Plug-Ins to actually work. I have Balance immediately and not more often than every is unchecked. Edit: Never mind, that won't be it. Christopher will come and help you out but, well, he may be enjoying some time off given the season.

AFAIK it does. However, placing DB in a DP does not solve the Junctions thingy.

What lee said. And, if you need a bit more time, they may be able to extend the trial for a bit.

With Disk/Storage Strings and FileSafe?

You have triple duplication? Wow... Anyway: "general purpose like storing family pictures/movies that can be sometimes deleted, created."... but pictures will, I assume, be "small"? In the MBs, not tens of them? Movies, say a decent .mkv rip might be what, 4GB at most? Writing those occasionally would not cause the write penalty. You would need to write at east 20GB in one go before you might experience it and I *think* that the PMR-cache gets written to the SMR-arrea pretty quickly once there is no I/O. Wrt. power consumption, those are rated numbers and given how close they are, actual measurement would be nice. But yes, if you have a lot of writes then you'd need a more difficult statistic as the Archive will suffer from a kind of. I guess we can call it, write-amplification indeed.

I would say yes. I can not find a "normal" 6TB HDD that is cheaper than these 8TB HDDs and they read like crazy (for spinners, certainly at 5.9Krpm). And if you write about 1 movie a day (assuming they are less than say 25GB) then you won't even suffer a write-penalty). Or per hour. Or per ten minutes I would think. And if you have a number of them in a Pool and don't use file-placement rules it gets even better still I would speculate.

Ah, yes, I can see that happening and you waiting for it. Still, a bit of an exception I would say.

I just realised this is simply false. The backup "transferred" 1.53TB but that does not mean that amount of data was written to the HDD, that would have been far far (FAR!) less. Sry. I still agree with everything else I wrote here. The SSD optimizer plug-in would indeed help should you encounter write-performance issues. Of course, only until writes exceeds the size of the SSDs + HDD cache and PMR cache. But I am pretty sure you could use a 4TB HDD you already own as cache as well with that plug-in. That might actually be the best setup of all.

Oh, I know that. I was more wondering about when do you, as a user, have I/O in excess of 50GB that you are actually waiting for to complete? I mean, I use them as Server Backup HDDs and I am certain I get that write penalty over and over but I don;t care because the backup process is automated and does not affect my user experience (restoring is different of course). Strangely enough, these backups run way faster on the 8TB HDD then on a 4TB WD Red...

Actually, there is a non-SMR cache of 20GB, so writing more might incur a write penalty. However, that only goes when areas of the HDD are re-written. If it is just write-once and no deletions then it should be fine AFAICS. As an example, a recent Server Backup wrote 1.53TB in 3:34 hrs. That is, OTOH, about 120MB/s. I have yet to come across a use-case where it would hit you noticable, let alone "hard". In what circumstances have you experienced that?

I use them for Server Backup. Drashna has them in his server as part of his Pool. There is a write-penalty but truth be told, I can not think of many use-cases where one would notice. For spinners, they read like crazy. If it mainly write-once / read many then I would say these offer the best value for money indeed.

No. Server Backup can not backup a DrivePool pool, only the actual underlying HDDs. If you have duplication x2 and more than 2 HDDs comprising the Pool you can only backup all HDDs and hence backup duplicates.

I still like the name "Strings" for groups of HDDs. It would also be nice if one could assign one or more HDDs as hot-additions. E.g., you could have 2 strings of 3 x 4TB HDDs and have one 4TB HDD spare to take over once Scanner wants to vacate a damaged HDD.

Especially for C:\ (OS) you might want to consider performing actual backups one way or the other. DrivePool (had it supported it), dynamic disks, RAID do not protect you against deletions, failed updates/installations and whatnot. Actually, this goes for all data.

LOL, sorry. I view this forum through "new topics" and I am not yet used to CloudDrive being a product.

DrivePool does not run on dynamic disks. https://stablebit.com/DrivePool/Features(see smallprint with No Need to Reformat the Disks to Add Them to the Pool)

But do you see the file appearing on all three SSDs?

The only issue with WHS2011 Server Backup and AF drives I am aware of is in cases where the _backup_ HDD is AF AND connected through a SATA-USB hub that lies about the HDDs properties (many do to help compatability of 2.2TB+ HDDs with Windows XP). I am backing up to AF HDDs (4TB WD and 8TB Seagate Archives) connected directly to SATA and my 2TB Server HDDs are AF.

I can only think of a few drawbacks partitioning 2x2TB HDDs but can hardly imagine these to be relevant IRL: 1. You can not store single files > 2TB 2. Assuming you would actually write to both partitions (instead of filling up one first), one partition will perform better than the other because one partition will use the inner cylinders where performance is lower. I do remember a time when the latter issue was relevant. You'd get better performance out of a 1TB HDD partitioned as a 200GB HDD then a plain 200GB HDD, simply becuase the heads never had to move as much. But nowadays? Personally, as a WHS2011 user, I would always partition in 2TB HDDs (at least until DP gets the grouping/string functionality) but then I do do a full Server Backup. In your case, you could simply do 4TB and hustle around a bit as, if and when you do want to use Server Backup.

From those screenprints, I would guiess that you moved data from E:\ and G:\ (about 100-120GB in total) to somewhere else or deleted it? DP will not delete the drive letters, you can still use the HDDs outside of the Pool as well (although, why would you make things difficult like that?). You _can_ do it yourself, see post by Drashna. In my experience, DP is made with the idea to be as little intrusive as possible, it will not, by default, make any changes to your system which could cause all kinds of issues (as in for axample certain programs needing data on certain driveletters).

As I read it, you have 48TB capacity and 21TB of data. I would duplicate all as I assume you do not make backups and do want to be at least somewhat protected. Duplication <> backup but at least you are likely not to lose anything in case of a single HDD failure. It will leave about 6TB free (although, due to duplication it would only be about 3TB net). I would consider adding one or two (or four) 8TB Seagate Archive HDDs. They are cheap per TB and read like crazy. There is a write-performance penalty but, frankly, I do not see that affecting your system as it would hit only when you have a lot of writes and I assume most of your data is actually static. It will leave you with a lot of room to move data to from current HDDs that start to fail. The is a File Placement add-in that helps you to ensure that media files that belong to each other or not scattered over many HDDs (you could get it to have groups of files to be written to two HDDs only) but I do not use it and can not actually help with that. I am usnure what you mean exactly by "I had one drive with data on it, and it added the free space to the pool, and there was a drive with just the data on it that remained. I moved the data, but it didn't remove the now empty drive."