RFOneWatt

Did you get this sorted?
Seems to me you did everything correctly.
So, to be clear - You had a standalone 8TB drive that was getting full.
You bought a new 12TB drive.
You downloaded and installed DrivePool. 
You created a brand new Pool consisting of your old 8TB drive and the new drive 12TB drive,  giving you a new Virtual Drive, G:
Because G: is considered a new drive, you are going to want to MOVE all of your files from E: to G:
That's all you should have to do.
In the future when you add drives to the pool you won't have to do anything and you should simply see the new free space from the new drive.  
Since this is a new pool, it's empty.
~RF

Throw them in the gutter.
Better yet, toss them through the front window of Seagate HQ.  
ST3000DM001 Excessive Failures
Because of these drives (and a few prior issues with Seagate drives) I will never purchase a Seagate product again... 
No reason to when I can get HGST's for the same money..  I haven't had a bad HGST drive yet!  (Out of about 30)
~RF
 

I swapped out the 80MM's in the rear of both my 4220 and 4224 Norco cases with the Vantec's. 
 
With those running on high you could probably get away with all three fans failing on the main fan board and just the two Vantecs in the rear would keep the cases cool.   They move that much air.
 
In each case I run all five of the fans (three 120MM Deltas on the fan board and the two rear 80's) through one of these in each case and it works way better than I expected.
 
Variable Fan Controller
 
It's fun to crank them all the way up (on the fan board I used the fastest 120MM Delta's I could find) and watch the cases hover.   
 
<grin>
 
My servers are in my basement and on high you can hear them throughout the whole house. (and I live in a cinder block and plaster house built in the 50's.)
 
With the above fan controller around 1/4 the way up they are nice and quiet and I haven't had to move the knob it in three years on either machine.
 
~RF

THIS: 
 
 
Nobody knows about it. 
 
Fix that problem and everything else will fall into place. 
 
I remember when I first stumbled upon DrivePool. I've been doing this stuff for a long, long time and I was floored with the product. I'm not easily impressed but DrivePool flipped my switches. I actually wrote a damn good "first impressions" review the first night I installed it (which I can't seem to find ATM but will eventually run across.)
 
I do my my best to promote it every chance I get (which is admittedly not very often these days) but with proper advertising and promotion your "little development company" wouldn't be little for for very long. 
 
I would charge extra for MAJOR upgrades.
 
If I got an e-mail from you guys tomorrow that said "Drivepool 3.0 available now - 25.00 upgrade fee" I wouldn't hesitate.  I don't think most would.  
 
I've e-mailed Covecube @ 2:00AM on a Sunday and received an answer within twenty minutes.  It doesn't get better than that. 
 
You guys have a gem on your hands -- it needs to be treated like one and you guys deserve to GET PAID in the process.  
 
Just my 2 cents.
 
~RF

You just reminded me that I need to return the bad drives to Seagate before they charge me.
 
I haven't had a chance to modify the firmware on any of the drives, which appears to be the best solution (you rock, Drashna) but I do need to do my 5TB pretty soon.
 
For now I throttled the SMART queries in Scanner and at first glance I think its helping..  How much, I haven't had a chance to check yet... 
 
-T

You old?
 
I was 12-13 y/o when I was running my C-64 BBS ... on C-Net!   So don't feel bad.
 
Those 1581's were a finicky bunch until about their last run when the finally got most of the bugs out.. by then it was too late though! 
 
~RF

Don't feel inadequate -- we all started somewhere.  I don't think anybody here is using 8TB drives yet.  Out of all of my drives a 5TB is my largest. The rest are mostly all 4TB HGST and Seagate drives.
 
For the best bang for your buck I would recommend doing your research and buying (quality) used hardware.  That's how I was able to afford my first Xeon server.  Right now there are a ton of multi-processor Xeon boards/servers out there that are a dime a dozen with the only caveat being electrical usage due to being a bit older.  
 
I have a hard time recommending Highpoint stuff.
 
It's finicky to say the least. I've been doing this for almost 30 years and I've never had a brand of controller that gave me as many headaches as the Highpoint's. I own, use and rely on two 2740's, a 2720 and a couple of their smaller Rocketraid cards (that I started with) and they all had weird/annoying issues. After some headaches I was able to work through all of the issues but had to jump through quite a few hoops to do so. Once they are up and running I have no complaints (so far) but I would not recommend them to someone who is unfamiliar with them and I'll never purchase another Highpoint product.  If you're willing to play, learn and be frustrated go for it. Once they are "happy" they are pretty darn fast for the $$.
 
If you're on a smaller budget I would suggest checking out some of the LSI stuff for your controllers.  Drashna and some of the other guys here have more experience with them but I recently purchased a 9240-8i and I've had no issues and really like it.
 
If you need a large drive case and are willing to forego a couple of amenities such as hot-swap trays you can get a much better deal on a Rosewell or something similar.  
 
I'm by no means a hardware guy but I'm sure  you'll get some better answers from some of the other folks here.
 
Good luck!!!
 
~RF

Nahhh, sorry. The 4220 isn't for sale.. It's only a few months old and it's actually in use now with a 6TB pool of a few junk drives (except for the feeder disks.) I actually walked into my radio collection room this morning looking at some of my pieces. Ever since Drashna mentioned those 8TB platters my mind has been spinning.  24x8TB = what?! 
 
I honestly did not need the 4224 at the time I ordered it (about 6 months ago) but I saw no other way to upgrade the motherboard/processor/RAM in my 4220 without any downtime. Because I was working with Highpoint cards I knew I'd be running into some weird issues and it would take a few days for me to feel the warm, comforting stability fuzzies that should always accompany a new, important machine.
 
SO.. after a bit of deliberation I ordered the 4224 case and just put all of of the new components I had been collecting in that. It only took two days to be sure it was stable. I expected much worse and it could have been as I did run into the strangest freakin' problem in all my 30+ years of doing this stuff. If I didn't happen to have two identical Highpoint 2740's on hand I'd still be in limbo waiting for an RMA from Highpoint -- again. I swear, the problem was so freaking weird it's still bugging the crap out of me because I fixed the problem by swapping cards in the machines, that's all....and so I still don't know the answer....as I said before I'm by no means a hardware guy but I've built quite a few servers. 
 
I do have one of these I might be willing to part with. It's not dirt cheap though, esp. once you throw in shipping: Sans Digital 8 Bay Tower Raid  - The one I have is black.
 
Honestly you'd be better off just buying the Norco 4224. The difference in price isn't that much and you wouldn't be settling. Never settle!! I got my 4220 for $319.00 shipped from E-Bay. Not too bad. it's the ancillary items that kill ya but they can be bought and scavenged one piece at a time.
 
Off the subject kinda but exactly how I just built my new server with limited resources (granted,over a shorter period of time but same concept as below:)
 
Whenever I've wanted something I couldn't afford outright (I DETEST credit cards) I try and buy it in pieces (whenever possible.) About 10 years ago I had a dream of having a BIG radio tower in my backyard. And if you want a big freestanding radio tower (no guy wires) in a residential area, well,  they are far from inexpensive. Almost impossibly so-for-the-average-joe.
 
Sooo... I bought one 10 ft section of tower at a time over a period of about three years all the while keeping my eyes open for all of the other components I needed for the project. When you're not in a hurry it makes all the difference in the world. An example was the rotor I needed to point/rotate the antenna array on top of the tower. New they cost more than $800 and are built like garbage compared to the old American made stuff. I ended up buying one that was manufactured in 1976, off of E-Bay for 75.00. It was a bit rough but it was all original and it did still sorta work. I then sent it out to a shop to be refurbished, told him to take his time and got it back about a month later, absolutely better than new for about $250.00 total.. Rinse and repeat until the seemingly impossible became possible!!
 
~RF
 
 
...sorry about the babbling. 

Contender?  I think he's more like THE KING.  
 
Then again I've been contemplating a Drivepool install at work and I could see it getting pretty darn close with our CAD guys workload and/or our backups system.  But for home use, I think Drashna is the winner ATM. 
 
I was just reading some reviews on those 8TB drives --- are they really that much slower in your experience?
 
I use all of the heat equalization features in Drivepool but it also appears to me that some slots simply have better cooling than others(?)... now If I could get a handle on which drive is in which slot in the enclosure I could test that theory out and put the handful of 7200's I popped in the pool in those slots. When I swapped out four 5900RPM drives to otherwise identical 7200 RPM drives (in the 4220 enclosure) the temps went up a few degrees across the board. I have a bank of drives that simply stay between 77-85 and will not get any hotter.
 
I need to spend the time that you did, Drashna, identifying and labeling the drives... which I should have done when I moved most of the drives from the 4220 into the 4224. The only reason I didn't was because I was in a hurry to get th e machine back online......and for the record, THANKFULLY, the 4220 drive caddies slide right into the 4224 chassis.  I was dreading all of those little tiny screws.
 
I do have one five TB Seagate that I yanked out of an external enclosure and popped in my pool.  I don't think they sold too many 5TB drives... 
 
~RF

I can't see any reason to replace the 80MM's with 120's if you're not worried about noise.  I actually kind of find it silly to cram that many drives into an enclosure and struggle to keep it quiet.  That many drives so close together needs serious cooling.  
 
The stock fans though are definitely inadequate for anything other than a very cool data center and I am being forced to either leave the A/C in my house at 73-ish while I'm not there or replace the two 80's in the rear of the 4224 with the Tornados.  About 1/2 throttle is getting the job done nicely on my 4220.
 
Yeah, those 80's sure do move some air...  about 85CFM IIRC. That's just nuts from such a small fan.
 
Do your 8TB platters run any hotter than your 4's??
 
~RF

On my 4220 I use three 120MM Delta "screamers" and two 80MM Tornado's in the rear, all in parallel running through this guy:  http://goo.gl/yDXnXS
 
I drilled a small hole in the front plate where the slim DVD drive would go and mounted the variable control. 
 
I found that with two 80MM Tornado's for exhaust you could lose all the fans on the fan plate with a fully populated enclosure and still be OK..
 
....of course you'd be deaf if the server was anywhere near you but for applications where sound isn't an issue these Tornado's can't be beat for airflow. (And longevity from what I've read -- apparently they last forever.) I've got two extras sitting here waiting to go in WOPR if need be.
 
My servers are in the basement and my drives in the 4224 are running between 80-102 with the A/C in the house set at 73.That's OK but much higher than the 85-90 I like to sit at.
 
I think if I leave the house for more than a day or two, with the A/C set at 77-79 I'm going to have issues with the stock 4224.
 
The 4220 with the Delta's and Tornados, with no A/C on in the house, the drives run between 71-90.  Absolutely perfect temp IMO..
 
~RF
 
4224 W/ Stock Cooling.  Room Temp 73F
 

I'm sure I've seen your system and may even know you - I was a Boardwatch subscriber and ran one of the largest BBS' in the country.  I'm surely going to recognize the name of your BBS. 
 
My story sounds similar to yours...
 
in a nutshell: started out running a Multi-Node system on an Amiga. Once we hit 16 lines we couldn't get any more multi-port hardware so I switched to Major BBS.  Maxed out at 88 POTS lines before switching over to multiple T1's and into the ISP category.   (I've left out some bits as you know.. haha)
 
Major BBS?  Wildcat?  
 
~RF

He absolutely hit the nail on the end and my professional experience mirrors his, specifically with Seagate Cheetah 15k's being the drive majority in most all my large data center experience in the last 10 years.
 
For the C64, I had the first hard drive ever available.  A 20 MEG Xetec Lt. Kernal...which contained a 20MB Seagate SCSI drive. That was 1985.  Fun Times...I was 11 years old and man did I have to beg for that.  It was a Christmas/Birthday present.
 
Here's one I think about quite frequently: Drive Orientation for longevity - horizontal or vertical. 
 
Physics tells me horizontal.. Drive manufacturers say "no matter."
 
I'll mount mine flat, thank you... just because it makes me feel better I suppose....
 
~RF

After watching a few things with Emby...transcoding and access via DLNA appears a  bit "wonky".  I had two large MKV's that would stop part way through in Emby but play fine in Plex. It appears there isn't a PS3 client, which is an issue now that I've been spoiled by the Plex client..but one of the neighbors using a 360 txt'd me asking me "What this Emby thing was" and to leave it on...so... still playing with it, trying the other clients, etc.  Most certainly a nice piece of software.
 
Hey, in 1996 I had a DOS 6.22 box running a HTTP server, POP3 server, SMTP server, IRC server, FTP server, NNTP server, SMTP server, NTP server, RADIUS server while running a multi-node BBS.. All on a Pentium 60 w/ 16 megs of ram -- and it did it without flinching. Now THAT was amazing.    
 
I had friends who ran Media Center boxes..2005 me thinks. It was an actual whole O/S, they had dedicated machines and cable cards. I'm guessing it was then baked into WHS. IIRC I avoided it because I had Direc-TV which meant no tuner card support. So for my use, with TVersity and the DLNA access via XBMC on original XBOX (still a damn useful machine) at the time I didn't see any reason to run it. 
 
Thanks for the GPU link. Very interesting to say the least.
 
This is obviously a stupid question and yes I could Google but doesn't there have to be logon for Task Scheduler to run something?  
 
Sonarr will take ya five minutes  Just do it.
 
Woot.. just popped the motherboard and PS in the 4224!  She'll be fired up tomorrow.  Things take me so long because I'm so damn indecisive... I'll sit and procrastinate on the configuration rather than just plowing forward and then think about.....I need to do more plowing and less thinking!

160 megs in 82/83??  That is insane for an individual at that time.
 
I'm guessing it was the biggest Public Domain repository in the country.  
 
-T

I'm sure I've seen your system and may even know you - I was a Boardwatch subscriber and ran one of the largest BBS' in the country.  I'm surely going to recognize the name of your BBS. 
 
My story sounds similar to yours...
 
in a nutshell: started out running a Multi-Node system on an Amiga. Once we hit 16 lines we couldn't get any more multi-port hardware so I switched to Major BBS.  Maxed out at 88 POTS lines before switching over to multiple T1's and into the ISP category.   (I've left out some bits as you know.. haha)
 
Major BBS?  Wildcat?  
 
~RF

He absolutely hit the nail on the end and my professional experience mirrors his, specifically with Seagate Cheetah 15k's being the drive majority in most all my large data center experience in the last 10 years.
 
For the C64, I had the first hard drive ever available.  A 20 MEG Xetec Lt. Kernal...which contained a 20MB Seagate SCSI drive. That was 1985.  Fun Times...I was 11 years old and man did I have to beg for that.  It was a Christmas/Birthday present.
 
Here's one I think about quite frequently: Drive Orientation for longevity - horizontal or vertical. 
 
Physics tells me horizontal.. Drive manufacturers say "no matter."
 
I'll mount mine flat, thank you... just because it makes me feel better I suppose....
 
~RF

That explains some of it -- I have avoided everything "Microsoft Media Center" since day one and I didn't think people actually used Windows Home Server was a real thing up until a couple of years ago. 
 
You just made me chuckle...
 
"Check out the Emby Service" -- The first day I installed Plex I was combing through the options and was perplexed that I couldn't find the "Start As Service" option on a "SERVER" piece of software. Back in the NT days I used SRVANY in situations like this and I planned to do the same for Plex but just haven't gotten around to it.  Amazes me it's still not an option. 
 
I recently switched from Sickbeard to Sonarr.  I don't think I'll be headed back.  I did however find the option in Emby to store all of the metadata in a specified directory so that problem is solved.
 
As for my thoughts?  Well, I can't be definitive until I run Emby for a bit longer but right off the bat they are so close it's ridiculous and it's nice having the choice --  but I will say this: 
 
Emby is free. (Doesn't really matter, I'd donate anyways)
Emby is more my speed. (Multiple meanings)
 
I'll probably switch permanently to whichever one gets the GPU acceleration implementation working correctly....my bet is on Emby.
 
~RF

No, I never have.
 
Sounds like you need to poke around over at http://c64.org  -- You will certainly find the answer to your question. 
 
I never actually play too many video games.. heck, even when I was importing them into the US when I was a kid I didn't play many of them.
 
I was more into the demo scene, importing and collecting.
 
One of these days I need to hook all of my Commodore stuff back up.  It's been sitting in a storage closet at my parents house since the FBI gave it back. (15 years after they took it!)
 
~RF

Someone has to have it, right?
 
How about we start with the largest pool of the members that participate here?
 
I'm taking an uneducated guess that theoretically Drivepool should scale indefinitely (or to some insane limitation imposed by the O/S, hardware or something else) however we all know the real world is where it's at, yes?
 
I'm sure I'm nowhere near the largest but I've maxed out my Norco 4220, and then some.
 
It's NOW time to start building the successor! 
 

 
 
 
Would love to see what everybody else has going on!
 
~RF
 
 

I somehow missed this response earlier.  I didn't realize Emby was that nice. (as in an actual Plex competitor) 
 
It really is hard to believe the UI is so that much better, Plex is beautiful.
 
Argh. Now I feel the need to install it just to compare.
 
........more hours in the day!
 
~RF

Somehow Emby has slipped under my radar over the last few years. I might have to take a look at it for the heck of it.
 
I've tried most every DLNA server that I've run across and my experience goes like this.....
 
The first DLNA media server I ever used was TVersity, for a few reasons. #1) It was the first and only (at the time) DLNA server that would transcode AND only when needed on a per device basis. #2) It was 100% free. #3) I simply couldn't find anything better. Free or Paid. 
 
I needed to feed original X-Boxes running XBMC, X-Box 360's and several WDTV Live boxes but the majority of clients were/are Playstation 3's. After A LOT of tweaking I got TVersity where I wanted it and had no complaints for several years. It just worked.
 
Like you said Plex wanted to transcode everything which made it basically unusable for more than one or two streams so I stuck with TVersity.  It just worked.
 
Then I ran across Serviio and have been using it for about a year or so. A few short months ago I decided to check Plex out once again and wow,  I haven't looked back. Plex has its (minor) quirks but they are working their butts off over there and I have zero complaints. The community support is superb and they will get around to fixing what little annoyances I have. I notice the Plex server is updated about once every two weeks or so.
 
I didn't even know they had a Windows 8 app. If it's that bad just open up a browser (suggest Chrome in desktop mode) and skip using the app entirely. I have been extremely impressed with all of the Plex clients that I have tried (they sure support a lot!) but I must say the Samsung Smart-TV app is stunning. The PS3 & Android app are great also. I've read that the Roku 3 and Vizio clients are also wonderful. 
 
Personally I think the best experience is had in Chrome.
 
I know we're not exactly apples-2-apples with our configurations (DLNA, etc.) but I just wanted to share my experiences.
 
I still run Serviio in tandem with Plex though as a backup. I did pay for it and it works great in case I ever have an issue with Plex I can just stream from Serviio, it's on a different machine and pointed at the same media (drive)pool as my Plex server.. although I haven't had to use it yet.
 
PLex has come a long way in the past several months. I 'spect they got some funding.
 
Now go upgrade your Plex pass and show them some more love. They aren't slouching over there and I'm sure any issues you have will be resolved.
 
WIth all that said I wish you the best viewing experience and thanks for sharing your thoughts.    
 
Now to decide on the 10GB hardware I need.... Argh.. need more hours in the day to research!!!! 
 
~RF
 
 
 
 

OK, Gotcha. Time to start trolling E-Bay.
 
As I said before, I'm not much of a hardware guy so .... ummmm...
 
Two 10GB NIC's, one for each Norco box...
 
Two Mini GBIC's for the Cisco SG200?
 
Am I missing anything Drashna?   
 
WWDD???  
 
haha
 
~RF

Hi Carlo, welcome Philmatic.
 
Looks like Carlo is king but as he said 33TB isn't anything to sneeze at. Especially if it's running, working and reliable.
 
I can certainly see your point on duplicating everything Drashna however that's basically the reason I run DrivePool. I have my important stuff duplicated and the replaceable stuff unduplicated. It's nice to pick and choose with folder duplication. I haven't really done the math but I *think* if I wanted to take that big of a hit on drivespace I'd run a conventional RAID. Maybe. (Not that there aren't plenty of other advantages to Drivepool..and I do need to rethink some things)
 
I was kidding about my Drive Pool being ALL PORN however the majority of my pool is video. (my personal favorite being older TV) however I know I fit the definition of data hoarder. I've got every file and picture that's ever been on any of my machines since around 1997..heck.. even from before that. I've got all of my C-64/128/Amiga disc images, all of my old BBS files, clients, business' etc. all online.
 
I also bought the first consumer digital camera that ever came out and went through several girlfriends with that one so needless to say "stuff adds up!' 
 
This new 4224 build is going to be Server 2012 Standard and I think I'll have some fun with deduplication. I can see it has it's place.
 
I really want the disk subsystem to fly on the this new 4224 build.
 
On hand I have a HighPoint 2740, a LSI 9240-8I and a Dell PERC H710P I scavenged in addition to the ports available on the motherboard, a Supermicro X-10DRI-O however I am not opposed to spending some "real money" on a new controller...
 
Heck, here's a picture of most the hardware that has arrived so far, all sitting on top of my running 4220 on the mini "bench." I'm pretty sure the only thing missing in this picture are two additional EVO 850's that just showed up. (for a total of four)
 
I do also have six 600GB 15K Cheetah SAS drives but I don't know if they will make it into this build or not. They are used with about two years of power on time but barely any usage.
 
I'm pretty sure I'm going to populate most of the bays in the Norco with 7200RPM HGST NAS drives or WD Reds.. I haven't made up my mind yet.  
 
The 4224 case just arrived and is sitting next to this 4220 awaiting insertion of parts. 
 
Decisions, decisions.
 
~RF
 

 
 
 
 

Hey Guys -- Sorry to bail on this thread so long ago. After I read it Mr. Drashna got me thinking.... 
 
Let's say this:  It appears that it's a bad idea to have every piece of network hardware in the house(s) on battery back-ups --particularly when it's cheap hardware.   
 
The power in the neighborhood hasn't gone out for a significant amount of time which meant I had several "junk/dumb" GB switches (meaning Trendnet, TP-Link and the like.) that haven't been power cycled in many, many months.  
 
So.....I'm not sure which switch/router was the problem but after power cycling all of them (and doing nothing else) everything basically matches your guesstimates above.
 
So with this system now up, running & stable I'm about to begin a 4224 build.  Once that's up and running I can revisit the 4220 box and clean up a few loose ends that are bugging me..but at this point it's 100% stable.
 
With my new 4224 build (Meant to separate my media server from my storage server)  I can do things a bit more slowly and concentrate on a few key points. 
 
Originally I was just going to upgrade the motherboard in the 4220 and call it a day but at this point I can't afford any significant downtime and wanted to spend time tweaking (specifically the network side of things) so I decided a totally new build was in order and began collecting all the pieces which have mostly arrived.
 
I'm sure you don't remember me Drashna but you came to my rescue a couple times (On two separate Sundays no less) during the 4220 build which was my first "serious" experience with DrivePool & Highpoint controllers... I sincerely appreciate it.
 
~RF