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airjrdn

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Posts posted by airjrdn

  1. In addition to what others have said (and what RobbieH said is something I'd say is very important), I think your second sentence is key here...

     

    Currently I have 4x 2tb drives in raid 5 which are almost full so I am looking to purcahse a new set of drives and move my data over.

     

    With DrivePool, you'd simply buy another disk (or more - of ANY size) and increase the size of the pool.  There'd be no need to replace the entire array/pool all at once, spend time copying the data, etc.

  2. Crashplan has continued to back up to the dropped drive for over a week now.  I re-marked all readable blocks as as unchecked and kicked off Scanner one more time.  It's about 55% done as of right now.  If that comes out clean, I'm going to assume this drive is good and re-purpose the drive it's replacing.

     

    Fingers crossed! lol

  3. So far so good.  Scanner gave it a clean bill of health and CrashPlan has been backing two computers up to it for a couple days now.  In another week or two I'll consider it good and add the old one (4TB) to DrivePool.

  4. Ok.  Scanner is about 70% done.  It's the destination for local CrashPlan backups, and was replacing a 4TB drive I haven't wiped yet.  I'll leave the 4TB drive alone for a couple weeks in case this one dies.  If this one get a clean bill of health from the scan and lasts through a couple of weeks of CrashPlan backups I'll assume it's good and wipe the 4TB.

     

    Technically, if the 5TB drive dies and I revert back to using the 4TB drive, I'll lose a few versions of files, but given the data that won't be a problem.

     

    Thanks!

  5. The absolute best luck I've had is with SpinRite, but it isn't free, isn't fast, and I think I read somewhere that it had compatibility issues with drives larger than 2TB, but I can't swear by that one.

     

    Anyway, if you're only looking to get back your non-important stuff, it may not be worth it.

  6. In a boneheaded move I dropped an external drive off the desk onto the floor.  A quick chkdsk turned up no issues, but I've gone into Scanner and Marked all Readable blocks Unchecked then initiated a check.

     

    If that comes back clean, are there any other checks I could/should do to verify if the disk received any damage?

     

  7. Are you referring to the SSD Optimizer?  If so, one of the notes you might want to get clarification on is:

     

     

    If you are using duplicated files, then you should specify multiple SDD disks or else the system will fall back to an Archive disk for one or more of the file parts.

     

    Meaning, your RAID 0 setup is seen by DrivePool as a single drive, and if you have things duplicated, you probably aren't getting the functionality you're expecting.

     

    Personally, I'd think SSDs would be fast enough you wouldn't need to mess around with the complexities of RAID, but another option might be RAID 1 instead of 0.

     

    Another question I have about that plugin is, based on the note I quoted above, since I have duplication set at 3x for almost everything, would I need 3 SSDs to avoid "falling back" to an archive disk and negating the performance benefit I'm trying to get using SSDs?

  8. Yes, the message is coming from DrivePool.  Message Link

     

    I'll open a ticket w/the logs.  I have to stop the service for the logs to be unlocked so I can zip them up.  I have friends hitting files (Subsonic).  That can continue while I stop/start the service can't it?

     

    As for antivirus, Windows Defender is running on the machine, but that's it.

     

    Nothing else is using the files.  They are just backed up from websites I have/had.

  9. Strangely, I'm getting this error attempting to set duplication to 3x on folders that were already set to 2x.

     

     

    Duplication Warnings
     
    There were problems checking, duplicating or cleaning up one or more files on the pool.
     
    Files:
     
    \Files\Backups\old\My Website Backups\abcdef\2006_12_05\public_html\mpn\html\c99.php
    Operation did not complete successfully because the file contains a virus or potentially unwanted software
     

     

     

    I'm not sure how a php file would contain a virus in this context (on a Windows machine not running a webserver), but either way, I'd like to have it duplicated.  I selected "Duplicate now" (as opposed to cancel) the first time, but the message just came back after a few minutes.

     

  10. I have a question relating to this.

     

    Not long ago, I had a drive that DrivePool or Scanner, I don't remember which, reported as bad.  I ran to BestBuy, picked up another 2TB drive, replaced it, and went on my way.

     

    This weekend, I plugged that drive into an enclosure, and ran ActiveDisk to "kill" it which writes 0's across the entire disk.

     

    Given that the process successfully completed writing the 0's, is there any reason to believe the disk is actually good?  Would creating a partition, formatting it, and running a chkdsk suggest whether or not I could trust the disk again?

     

    I understand the risks if unduplicated data were to be stored on it, I'm just curious what other's thoughts are.

  11. Crashplan isn't going to offer duplication, it's backup software, not syncing software. The advantage (one of them anyway) of backup software is versioning.  You can get back different versions of your files.

     

    If you simply want to sync a copy of your pool or some subset of the files on it at different intervals, look into Syncback, FreeFileSync, etc.  I've used others, but none with the simplicity and robustness of those two.  I use Syncback for automated syncing, and FreeFileSync for one-offs.

  12. I had maxed out my nearly 4 year old 8-bay Calvary enclosure (EN-CADA8B-SD) with 2TB drives and was beginning to have issues somewhere in the storage chain (eSATA port multiplier card, drivers, eSATA cables, Calvary enclosure, etc.).  After troubleshooting off and on for a couple weeks or longer, I was ready to replace it with something less problematic that wasn't limited to 2TB drives.  I didn't however want to spend half a grand for something that came with RAID functionality I knew I'd never use.  For the time being, I wanted to continue using my existing drives and just replace the enclosure and connection to it.

     

    The enclosure was hooked to a Dell Inspiron 3847 (4th Gen Core i7, 16GB, running Win 8.1).  Duties for the machine include Plex, Subsonic, DNS updating, Crashplan backups, Syncback backups from the web, and of course, storage.  The machine sits out of sight in the basement, so going with something less pleasing to the eye was fine.

     

    I ended up going with a pair of Rosewill 4 drive cages and a couple of IO Crest SATA cards for connecting them to the Dell - which only has 2 PCI-e x1 slots and a single x16 slot.

     

    $45 for each of the Rosewills, and $34 each for the IO Crests and I was almost ready to go.  The Rosewill cages came with SATA cables that were long enough to reach from the inside of the case to the cages sitting right behind the Dell.  Power to the cages was supplied by an extra power supply I had lying around.  A quick short from the green wire to any black one will make the power supply think it's hooked to a motherboard and power on.  I used a paper clip to accomplish that.  If you go this route, keep in mind you'll need about 10w for each drive to be on the safe side for power requirements.

     

    If you're interested in doing something like this, what you get is four drives worth of connectivity for about $80.  There's no port multiplier functionality going on, one drive connects to one port on a card.  If you have extra SATA ports, you can skip the card purchase.  If you have extra molex power connectors for the Rosewill cages, you can go a little less ghetto than I did and skip the power supply lying on the desk.

     

    You are limited in performance to what a PCI-e x1 slot can handle (about 240MB/sec if I remember correctly), which seems fine, but remember, you're running four drives off of that, and 240MB/sec is theoretical.  Real world performance will be lower.

     

    All in all, I definitely consider it a win.  For not much out of pocket, I replaced the Calvary, gained the ability to use larger drives, and also the ability to buy another card and cage for a total of 12.  Not bad for an initial outlay of about $160 out of pocket.

     

    Hope this helps someone out there looking to do something similar.

     

  13. Ok, so if I understand correctly, Symbolic Links may actually allow for what I need to do...have essentially two names point to the same actual file.

     

    Let's discuss a simple scenario assuming the following:

    1. I have an empty 100GB pool
    2. The pool is set to 2x duplication
    3. I copy a single 10GB file to the pool
    4.  - Free space should now be 80GB, correct?
    5. I create a symbolic link to the file in a sub-directory on the pool
    6.  - What is free space now?
  14. I have a folder of files with names along the lines of:  "File name (Date).ext"

     

    I have a script I wrote that creates hardlinks of those files into a subfolder so they are named:  "Date - File name.ext" allowing me to browse them by date.

     

    If I run that script with DrivePool now storing all of the files, will it be intelligent enough not to consume double (or more depending on redundancy settings) the storage?

     

  15. I had actually gone with option 2.  Given that the drive had shown signs of issues, I had already set it to only contain duplicated data until the replacement drive arrived (yesterday).

     

    What I noticed was, using the Drive Usage Limiter, when unchecking the 2nd option (for duplicated data), the pool appeared to rebalance slowly to 100%, but the drive itself still showed a large bright blue bar indicating the duplicated data was not being removed.  I assume it was being duplicated elsewhere, but not removed from that drive, possibly just for safety reasons.

     

    The drive I removed was a 500G drive containing around 380G of (duplicated) data.  After replacing it and adding the new one to the pool, the pool went to work again.  I left for the night, and when I check things this morning, the pool progress bar was green, but the new 2TB replacement drive only has 2.44GB of unduplicated data and 2.19KB of duplicated data.  No balancing options have been changed, everything is at the default settings.

     

    The pool itself appears fine, the only real oddity is that the new drive is basically empty.

     

    Here's a link to an image of the DrivePool screen for you to see what I'm referring to.

     

    http://screencast.com/t/HYxQGSMZ8h1

  16. I'm replacing a single drive in my pool with a larger one.  The drive currently contains duplicated data only, as it was showing some errors.

     

    I'm curious, for this use case, is there a difference between these options?

     

    Option 1

    • Click Remove to remove the drive from the pool
    • Wait until that finishes
    • Physically remove the disk

    Option 2

    • Under Balancers->Drive Usage Limiter, uncheck both Duplicated and Unduplicated
    • Optionally wait until that finishes
    • Click Remove to remove the drive from the pool
    • Wait until that finishes
    • Physically remove the disk

     

  17. After a drive failure, I added a couple of new drives to the computer and the pool.  The drives were assigned drive letters and "named".  Strangely, one showed up initially in the Non-Pooled section of the Disks frame, but with no name or anything.  The only indication of it existing was the "+ Add" link on the far right side.  The other disk wasn't listed in the Disks frame at all.

     

    After trying several renames within Windows Explorer (and subsequently providing the necessary password to appease UAC), the empty name issue was still a problem.  Eventually, I just added it to the pool to see what would happen.  It added it to the pool, but the old name is still showing.

     

    After adding it, the other drive that hadn't been showing in either list (Pooled or Non-Pooled) showed up.  I added it to the pool as well.

     

    I can't recreate this issue at this point, and I wish I could tell you more, but that's about all I can remember.  Things were hectic last night, and I'm just now getting a chance to post this for you to be aware of / think about.

     

    Note that at this point, things have been running overnight, and there are two minor issues.  1 - The Pooled disk with the incorrect name is still showing it incorrectly, and 2 - An external disk I removed from the machine (I right clicked on the systray icon and said to eject it) is still showing up in the Non-Pooled disk list.

     

    At some point I'll reboot to see if the Disk lists reflect things correctly, but that may not happen until this evening.

     

  18. Thank you for the suggestion.  I'm running EaseUS Partition Recovery against the drive now and will let you know how it turns out.  The drive began clicking off and on when the issue occurred.  If I can get a file listing and run something against the drive to wipe at least part of the data, I'll be a happy camper. :)

     

    Depending on where this gets me, I may check out Sick-beard as well.  I use XBMC as my media center front end, and have played with Plex (not with much luck).  I haven't yet found anything to categorize/catalog my tv shows and movies (other than a file structure and naming convention I came up with) that I really like.

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