Beaker1024

I tried the BETA 602 as I have increased my usage of ROBOCOPY with the DrivePool (hence I was reading this thread, etc...). Christopher - I used: https://stablebit.com/Contact as you previously suggested. I did attach all the screen captures seen in my posts in this thread plus 4-5 *.log files. (the files that were modified/added to when I did the dashboard load/crash). The "contact" submitting webpage went to a "Capta" verification which I did and it said I did it correctly then it was done. I don't recall a verification number. I did put my email address (filled out entire "contact" form). But I haven't received an automatic email or anything (if that would be normal). PS- From the WHS2011 server desktop (RDP) what is the shortcut to load "Drive Pool (force TCP)" mean compared to the "Drive Pool" shortcut (which I have been using to make settings/check things)?

Christopher, I sent you a message with some attachments. I was able to finally screen capture a quick error mesage. I've included it in the message from the your "contact" page but thought I'd add it here as well.

So I enabled the drivePool addin for dashboard again just to generate the log entries (so I can see which were updated) and to capture the windows error messages on a crash. Here's what I found: NOTE: BETA 602 will always crash my Dashboard (Win7 x64) on load/start. Works fine with DrivePool addin selectively disabled. FROM VCL Listener Log file. [03/26/2015 13:16:22 2a1c] IWTSPlugin::Initialize called [03/26/2015 13:16:22 2a1c] AllowVirtualChannelInitialization value: 1 [03/26/2015 13:16:45 27bc] Dashboard reported - Loading started... [03/26/2015 13:16:45 27bc] Restarting DashboardClient, sending DashboardLoading [03/26/2015 13:16:45 27bc] EditPathAndOpen - ShellExecute WORKED WITHOUT the quotes [03/26/2015 13:16:45 27bc] Operation: open [03/26/2015 13:16:45 27bc] Document: "C:\Program Files\Windows Server\Bin\DashboardClient.exe" [03/26/2015 13:16:45 27bc] Arguments: /dashboardLoading [03/26/2015 13:17:15 27bc] Received the title from Dashboard: Windows Home Server 2011 Dashboard [03/26/2015 13:17:56 2a1c] VCListener plugin is being terminated. [03/26/2015 13:17:56 2a1c] Restarting the DashboardClient [03/26/2015 13:17:56 2a1c] Restarting DashboardClient, sending ErrorOnLoad [03/26/2015 13:19:00 2704] IWTSPlugin::Initialize called [03/26/2015 13:19:00 2704] AllowVirtualChannelInitialization value: 1 [03/26/2015 13:19:01 b98] Dashboard reported - Loading started... [03/26/2015 13:19:01 b98] Restarting DashboardClient, sending DashboardLoading [03/26/2015 13:19:01 b98] EditPathAndOpen - ShellExecute WORKED WITHOUT the quotes [03/26/2015 13:19:01 b98] Operation: open [03/26/2015 13:19:01 b98] Document: "C:\Program Files\Windows Server\Bin\DashboardClient.exe" [03/26/2015 13:19:01 b98] Arguments: /dashboardLoading [03/26/2015 13:19:53 b98] Received the title from Dashboard: Windows Home Server 2011 Dashboard [03/26/2015 13:20:04 b98] Dashboard reported - Loaded successfully From Dashboard Client Log [5872] 150326.131622.3615: General: Showing the loading screen for 60 seconds --------------------------------------------------------- [12208] 150326.131756.1929: General: DashboardClient started with argument /errorOnLoad. [12208] 150326.131756.3129: General: Dashboard.exe has closed/crashed. Removing the cached credentials. [12208] 150326.131849.4130: General: Initializing...C:\Program Files\Windows Server\Bin\DashboardClient.exe [12208] 150326.131849.4630: General: Color branding started

My apologizes for being off topic. I do not intend to hijack the thread. I just want to post a finding with installing the BETA as mentioned above. I decided to try the *.602 beta myself. Had to do: reboot, uninstall, reboot, install, reboot to get it to install correctly. I got same error as mentioned above (reboot pending) for 1st install and 1st uninstall try normally. Posting so others will know that (at least for my setup) you might have issues loading the WHS2011 dashboard from Win 7 Pro 64x machine with the DrivePool BETA add-in loading. It'll crash each time. Says crash was detected by the external Addin DrivePool. Disabling that addin for the dashboard has things working again (without seeing DrivePool on dashboard of course). So it's RDP to do the non-dashboard program for DrivePool to see/change/check on things. The program outside the dashboard on WHS2011 has been working perfectly.

That did the trick! Thanks for the suggestion. I had rebooted once after adding the new HDD and started up the full sector scan (which I let finish before restarting the service as suggested. Now it's fine.

I have two of the same HDDs (WD Red 4tb). I did the same method of formating w/WHS2011 (dashboard automatic so I got 2 partitions, etc...) For some reason Scanner Disk Details sees the new one as MBR. To check things I have RDP'd into WHS2011 and loaded the "OS Server Manager - Disk Manager" to see the HDDs. The properties (Volume Tab) clearly says Partition Type = GUID Partiaion Table (GPT) for both of the WD Red 4tb drives. Any ideas on why Scanner disk details shows a different format/partion type? Don't know why but it's the reporting of Partion Type = MBR for the new one in Scanner that's bugging me the most. I think it's likely really GPT (via the OS manager). EDIT: Just remembered commandline "DiskPart" - "List Disks" I did that in (RDPd) WHS2011 and got the * for all the HDDs except the OS drive which I know is not my new WD Red 4tb as the OS MBR (only non-GPT) drive is only 700GB and List Disk gives the sizes. So the question is what's going on with Scanner drive details? Other noticable differences with the 2 HDDs is "Signature" in disk details. The new one is 0x0000000 and the older HDD is all different stuff. (Is this a Scanner signature for BitFlock or such?)

Christopher, Thanks for looking into it! This has really gotten me thinking that I should get enough HDD space to have at least 2x on everything. At the moment if I do that i'm at 95% full so I leave my biggest share "Recorded TV" as 1x. But some tiny shares (like size of 2 TV show Hours) as 3x. Can you do tell me what the strange files in the "Store" subfolder of "Service" for the "Program Data\DrivePool" are and what type of information they contain? Some kind of Hashes for the Hard Diskdrives or the information on the PoolParts so the virtual drive can pull everything together? I'm always curious how things work.

Christopher, Thank you for the information! It seems like the root folder duplication got "reset" wiping out the subfolders settings as they inherited the value again some time between late last night and this morning. I've got the "Services" folder zipped up. I used the wiki.covecube.com "box" app. Log File sections that seem different than (not found in) the previous days logs: [FileDuplication] Unable to correct file modification time after hash check on..... \Thumbs.db Access is denied A few log lines later: [FileDuplication] Unable to correct file modification time after hash check on.... different DIR\Thumbs.db Access is denied [FileDuplication] Error checking file...... for duplication [completely different share folder] Then some [Disks] Got disks modify.... Then some [FsControl] Clear pool mode: PoolModeMissingDisk (key=PoolPartUpdate) From here things get a little stranger. All of sudden my *.wtv files are getting logged by the "FileMover" starts saying my *.wtv aren't pattern limited and I bet thats when duplication of my unduplicated Recorded TV happened. Ok that was fun looking through the log files. Interested in hearing what you and Alex make of the log files and what happened. Thanks again!

Actually last night when I was moving some files from a folder to a subfolder I had one thing look strange in Win7 File explorer. First time I had it look like the files didn't move so I tried a second time and Win7 explorer (client working on WHS2011 share) said the files are no longer there (gave path). Had to moving out and into folder again to see that they were moved. Normally file explorer looks/works correctly. Could I have over taxed the realtime duplicating of DrivePool with too many moves, edits at once (2 PCs same share)? Causing DrivePool duplication to go nuts and change duplication quanity to all be the same as that one folder (was is 3x) I was working on? (Only for the root folder of "ServerShares" not for the "recycle bin" or "volumeInfo" folders in DrivePool.)

Ok so I've had folder duplication on for a while now with most being 2x some 3x and one share folder (Recorded TV) as 1x. Everything was fine until this morning I happened to notice Drivepool (on WHS2011 but using version 2.1.1.561) was doing "Duplicating" way past it's normal time-frame. Checked and all the "Server Shares" folders went from my individually set dupilcation amounts to being 3x at the root and rest being inherited. So that means it was trying to do 3x on my 1x Recorded TV share!!! As you can imagine that is not good. I don't have room for that. What could have caused it to change on it's own? I don't have much installed at all on my WHS2011 (do not even have remote web access turned on ever). I have the "Order File placement Plugin" installed and the Drive Scanner installed. They all seem to be the current version. This is my first reall bug/issue with your software (which I was signing praises of to my wife last night! Go figure.). Anything I can do to make sure this doesn't happen again? I had not gone into WHS2011 Dashboard or RDP into WHS2011 to load DrivePool software to where the settings could have been manually changed (via GUI) in the last few days! Only thing that happened different last night than any other night is my wife and I were working (opening, editing, creating, saving) files on the same share and same folders at the same time last night working things. We normally are not having this occur. (see 2nd post for details on last night's usage)

Christopher - Thanks for the detialed response! I guess I'm a little hesitant to move the "Client Backup" Share into the drive pool as all the searching I have done has found users that do this with existing backups have to wipe out the backups and start over. Those who started off from stratch with blank client backups and put the share folder in the Pool were ok. Could all of this be circumvented with just deleting the commit.dat file and letting it regenerate? It'd be nice to have it all in the pool duplicated but I'm definitely very hesitant as mentioned. BTW I will acknowledge that the 3-4 threads I found saying this issue where on the older Covecube forum (not this current forum) and from about circa 2012-ish. Is this concern outdated due to newer versions of DrivePool? (I'm inclinded to believe there is never an issue regarding drivepool but an issue of WHS client backups be delicate and the act of moving the folder breaks things!) I don't seem to find this disdcussion in newer forum threads. Thread mentioning a Sticky thread recommending not to put client backup into DrivePool (2012 covecube): http://forum.covecube.com/discussion/615/client-computer-backups-outside-the-pool/p1 [HardForum] 2014 - No real explaination just that it didn't work for them. http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1802729 "Of note, at least for me, server backup and client backups would not work on pooled drives. I use a separate drive for each." These can definitely be different situations and/or outdated information given DrivePool versions or other conditions.

I've done a search on this forum and read the blogs & manuals that I could find that mention DrivePool's evacuation but I don't see a specific statement to clearify things for me. Can you tell me if the DrivePool Evacation balancer has the ability to move files off a failing (for what ever reason) HDD that are not within the actual "pool" itself? [the "other" data] I have left my WHS2011 client computer backups outside of the Pool as I found too many threads / users of DrivePool have thier client backups need to be wiped out and started over to get it into the pool. The only feature I really want of drivePool for my client backups are to be moved out (Evacuated) if HDD has issues. NOTE: I do have the HDD that has the client backups share outside of the pool (as "other" data) added to the DrivePool. I hope that makes sense. Thank you for your assistance!

Bjur - I can't give you an exact setup but thought I'd chime in as just a month ago I went through the same thing. I've given up on worrying about HDD spin down. I have Scanner on both my HTPC (SSD & 1 WD Black Spinner) and my WHS2011 server (mix of 5 all Spinning HDDs). I gave a shot at doing spin down with settings on the firmware (set from Scanner; none of mine had Adv Power management avaiilable either) for 1.5 hrs (so watching a show or something on one HDD in pool wouldn't spin down other disks, etc...) I wasn't happy (seemed unsure of how things were working) doing this. I didn't like how my media playing software (using share on Pool) would behave with some drives spinning down, and some not, that are in the Pool while playing shows. (I'm guessing this is what happened) I've gone ahead and unchecked and set firmware back to unchecked for all individual HDDs to not spindown. Setup both machines to HDD spin down as NEVER (Win OS). HTPC sleeps (entire OS) according to usage state and the WHS2011 is 24/7 on (it was always OS on but default spin down of HDDs.. Things seems to be working nicely like this. I've decided to live with the added heat and electricity of not having the server HDDs spin down. Been watching HDDs temperatures and feel it acceptable at 35C max (in my environment for Server box). Also ok with extra electricity for drives spinning as I was selective in building rest of the server as low power. I feel that the benefit of the Scanner on these machine outweights this change.

I see what you mean. I had briefly thought to goto the File Placement rules in the balancer but didn't know where to start (in the wildcard/how to select files). Thanks for the insight into the "\*" rule and the rest makes perfect sense! Thanks again!

I like the idea of the Order File Placement Plug-in and have it installed from the start. I've tried using it and found that I would like to be able to adjust to in a way that it currently does not allow. I love that you have the option for different drive filling orders by either duplicated or unduplicated files! In my case I have 5 drives. 4 of which I don't mind filling equally but the 5th (so 1 of them) is just a "in case" drive for overfill or extra (I'm using it also for WHS "Client Backup Folder/share" that is NOT inside the DrivePool). Currently this feature's settings allows you to order or rank the drives as to which gets filled first then next, etc.... But it's a ranking where easy is a "priority level" of filing above or bellow the other. I'd like to be set my 4 main disks as equal level of filling (let the rest of the balancer dictate everything) and have the 1 other drive set as level bellow the other 4 for filling. So Currently I can setup like this: Drives Filling (any order but all at different ranked levels/order of filling): Fill order / HDD drive 1) A 2) B 3) C 4) D 5) E I'd like do be able to setup like this (able to set equaly/matched/balanced filling for some and one (or more) as reserve): Fill order / HDD drive 1) A, B, C, D 2) E This isn't urgent or a high priority for me as my client backup "Other data" has the drive filled to almost an equal % as the rest so it's kind of working out on it's own. Just something I thought I could use settings wise if that didn't happen with the "other data" helping me. I hope that makes some sense. I must admit that this request is based completely on just my own interpretations of the features/settings and I could be completely wrong or not understanding how to use what is already offered. BTW: Since using DrivePool & Scanner on my WHS2011 my life has gotten alot easier! I haven't installed or tried (don't have reason too) the SSD Optimizer plug-in but I think what I am looking for is the inverse of that plug-in (which would make sense to me to be in the Order File Placement Plug-in.

I just installed a 4TB red WD drive in my WHS2011 using both DrivePool and Stablebit scanner. No issues. I did used the WHS2011 add new storage drive wizard and for some reason it decided to go with MBR instead of GPT. I decided to leave it that way and let there be two partitions instead of one for the physical HDD. Just left the balancers rule for equalizing volumes on same drive enabled and it shouldn't matter. Maybe it'll spread the wear / location of filling the disk up differentially with two partitions? Likely won't matter a lick either way. As for the drive working with the software / OS & Covecube's it's a dream (well for the two weeks it's been going). PS - I also decided with adding this harddrive to go ahead and change to leaving all 5 of my server drives spinning 100% (no idle/standby/sleep). No ill effects yet but I don't miss the lag due to drive spin ups when accessing the server!

Thank you for the information! I"m almost to the point where I"m completely settled in with all my Scanner and Drivepool settings. The one last thing I'm trying to settle on is how often to have the DriveScanner do the surface / sector scan. I know it's defaulted to 30 days. Can you give some insite into what your "average" user likes to us (that you've heard)? I keep thinking of moving it to 15 or 20 days instead of 30.

Thanks for the information! It's just my backup drive that gets connected decrypted and a sync program usually only needs 5 minutes to put any new or modified files to it. Then it's disconnected and waits till the next backup/sync. Performance is of the lowest priority and it'll never be part of a DrivePool.

So I plugged a removal HDD in for the first time and instantly got a SMART error failing drive less than 24hrs. Over 1808 Reallocated Sectors Count So I let it do a sector scan for a while and it came up completely clean! Does it matter that I have 80% of the drive partitioned and encrypted with TrueCrypt? I know that SMART is a log of stats on the drive vs the scanning of the sectors to seeing if they are readable physically on the disk. How do you handle having SMART reading saying the disk is dieing soon and the scan / usage be perfectly fine?

Chris & Alex - I found my answer. Now that I had a batch of files that refused to balance and I went into the "Balance - File Placement" tab things became much more clear. You do have what I really wanted!!! You can click on the folder structure and it'll show you a bar graph of what drives and how much for that folder is on what HDD!!!! This program has so many very nicely thoughtout features that are not obvious of shown through your website! I think I've mentioned this in another thread but Alex has really written some amazing options/features (with the GUI to allow you to manage it!) Screen captures or YouTube videos could really show this off. So I'll tell you the strange roadblock I had to my balancing. I had made it so the "Pictures Folder" is only allowed on one HDD (so files/folders wheren't scattered everywhere). Of course I had it set to 2x duplication also. It appears it saw this as conflicting! I was saying make a duplicate but you can't put that folder on anything but this one drive!

That makes sense. I did do the remeasure now and the reset to defaults after the seeding. It seems that changing the balancer rules while it's balancing doesn't take effect until it's stopped and started again. Is that correct? I've now gotten through an entire duplication/balancing pass and it seems happy and done with one exception. The bar thing on the bottom isn't 100% and says: "File Distribution not optimal" "Files could not be moved to satisfy balancing rules......" Is this something to worry about or a normal thing? How do you really know when things are totally happy in the Pool balanced and Duplication side of things? PS - I gave it a few hours and asked it to re-balance again. It tried for a minute and stopped with the bar at the same point and the same message (and same amount of data size not optimally balanced). My measurements seem to make sense... I've got only the exact amount of "Other" as the size of my Share for Client Backups which I didn't put into the pool (but the Drive is in the Pool).

Well I went into protect folders again to add a few to be duplicated. For some reason the main panel updated and now the blue arrow for the unduplicated target on the I: J: drive letters (same disk) are now down to 0 (none) where a minute ago they were at 429GB or so! UPDATE: Even with the dark blue arrow at zero it's adding more files that are unduplicated to the drive.... wierd. Maybe it's doing things alright and I'm not understanding something. At this point I'm at 50% done for duplication.

So I have a new hard drifve that I thought I'd give a few months before I let it have any unduplicated files (to be safe). So I went into the balancer rules and found the "Drive Usage Limiter" and unchecked the box for "unduplicated" next to the new hard drive. Doesn't seem to be working as the main panel shows mostly unduplicated files being put on this hard drive. I've attached screen captures to show you what I mean. I couldn't do a screen capture with the hoover display on the hardrive form the main panel to really show how it's mostly unduplicated but you can see the bar's color. I'm I missing something? Screen Captures removed EDIT - NOTE: I just did a massive "seeding" today (but no file seeding on new HDD obviously) and it's been less then 24hrs. Does the duplication have to wait till tonight? It's been working on balancing all day and say's it's 90% done with balancing. Why do the I: and J: drives (same Hard disk) have a unduplicated target for them when I have it set to only allow duplicated files for that hard drive?

Christopher - I know you already have the file integrity (hash) checker add-in as something in the hopper/queue. I just wanted to chime in that I'm also very excited to see this created. Thanks for being so responsive to us!

Before either of your software my "data" (non-OS) WHS2011 Hard-drives were always spinning down/sleeping after 40 minutes. I never gave it much thought and lived with the 8-10 sec spinup. This was just kind of the out of the box WHS2011 power settings and me just thinking that I've saved a few watts for the 80% of the hours they weren't being accessed. After installing your software: Drives seem to be always spinning. Only downsides are extra electricity ~3-5Watts/drive & possible wear and tear on the HDD?? I did find and read the nice thread already discussing how to try to make the drives back to OOB WHS2011 standby/spin down: http://community.covecube.com/index.php?/topic/48-questions-regarding-hard-drive-spindownstandby/ I understand now there's a lot of settings/things to keep track of. That's ok. I tried the settings to get they to sleep again and have mixed results on my mix of brands of HDDs. I've now decided to jump camps and goto the always spinning / no standby or idle for the HDDs. I can live with 15-20Watts of electricity extra. Christopher - I read that this is your preferred method. I've done the adjustment in the WHS2011 RPD desktop to the power options for HDD from 40min now to "Never". Anything in the DrivePool scanner settings that you recommend having to change to definitely not interfere with all HDDs always being on? A) Read Power mode directly from disk: on/off? [i've set them all to read directly from disk currently.]) Disk Control -> Advanced power management is greyed out on all my HDDs. C) I uncheck "Standby Timer" and hit set. Next time I goto that settings it's the horizontal line in the box. Any comments / thoughts on my perceived notion of extra wear and tear on the HDDs? BTW - I'm ordering a WD Red 4TB in a few days which should be happy with the always on settings.