lottathought

Thanks for the info Christopher. I am reading up on it now.

Long story as to why but I am currently merging 2 pools into 1. What this requires is that I move some files from Pool 2 to Pool 1, remove a drive from the 2nd Pool and then add it to the 1st Pool. (1st Pool will soon be only Pool) What I have realized from this is that there are 2 features I would really like to have. 1st Feature... It would be great if you could simply merge Pools. 2nd Feature.. I am sometimes ready to move more than 1 drive at a time. So let's say for example that I have 2 drives I now want to remove from Pool 2. I start the removal of the first drive. When I click to also remove the 2nd drive (While the first is still removing), it says "Waiting to Remove". I understand that perhaps the system has reasons to remove the drives..one at a time. I do request that perhaps the drive that is "Waiting to Remove" could perhaps be bypassed and not have files added to it from the removal of the 1st drive, which will result in more wear and more more files to remove when its turn on removal starts. Still learning DrivePool...but so far I am pretty happy. These are just suggestions and not complaints.

I gave this card a hard look. What kept me from getting it is that it, according to the site specs, it can only function as a port multiplier for up to 7 drives total. That means that I could not even attach 2 4-drive enclosures and expect it to work.

I am running into an issue with Scanner initializing on the Server. Running 8.1 Pro OS on the Server. When I say it is an issue, what I mean is it just keeps on initializing. I have let it run 15 minutes before and it never went past initializing. I finally just clicked out of it. Sometimes it will come up in approx 5 minutes...but mostly it will just act hung in initializing until I give up. As a side note, while this is what is happening with Scanner on the Server that I am actually watching, when I log in remotely from the office on the other side of the house, it can take a few minutes...but does usually come up. (I am using Scanner in the office to remotely monitor the same Server.) I also use Drivepool and it pops up with no problem. What I am trying to determine is if there is something that I should check, reset or if I should just un-install Scanner... and re-download the program to install again.

I spent the better part of 2 days trying to determine why 2 drives would not play nice in either Drivepool or Scanner. I thought I would share my findings as it may help somebody with similar issues. The backstory is that I am using some drives out of my old server in the new build. The old system was a WHS Vers 1. I would copy files from the hidden shares under DE.. I would then format the drive and attempt to put the drive in a pool. I had 2 drives... each had random issues going on. One was the only drive in a pool. It allowed files to be loaded and offloaded with no problem. It was reporting an issue with Optimization however..and it would not correct. I could not add any new drives to the pool...and it would not allow itself to be removed from the pool. I actually pulled the drive...and it was still showing up in Scanner. And oddly enough,,,it reported a S/N...but the wrong one for the device. I formated it over 10X... I looked through the Drivepool and Scanner configs....nada. The other drive would not be recognized...either by Scanner or Drivepool. It would show up in Windows....the OS would assign a letter...but it would not be recognized otherwise. There turned out to be 1 fix for both. I went into Disc Manager of Windows. In each case, when I deleted the old Partitions and made new, Simple Partitions, it was like magic...both drives started functioning perfectly and showed up everywhere that they were supposed to. Formatting is not enough it appears. As a rule now, unless I put in a new drive, I will always make a point to delete the partitons. Something about the old Partitions. It seems that neither Drivepool nor Scanner like them. It has not happened on every drive...but enough now that I am seeing a pattern. If you are having quirky issues with a drive, get the data off and try this if you never have. It might be the fix you are looking for.

Long story short ....kind of... I recently upgraded my server. I am running Windows 8.1 Pro OS on a SSD. The only other things running are Drivepool and Scanner. The actual pool is a number of drives that are in addition to the SSD. The OS SSD is not part of the pool but, as I said Drivepool and Scanner are installed there. Soooooo..through work, I was offered the opportunity to use a copy of Windows Server 2012 R2 Essentials for my build and upgrade from the 8.1 P version. It will all be the same hardware that I recently upgraded to. My issue is that I have moved my data over already... All is stored and duplicated at the drive level in a Pool. My planned process is.... Transfer out my licensees from Drivepool and Scanner. Power down the PC and disco all the drives except the OS SSD. Install Server 2012. Install Drivepool and Scanner again...put the licenses back in. Power down the PC and re-install all the drives. It is my understanding at this point that Drivepool will find the earlier pool and re-create it...all files intact. This leads me to my first question...how reliably does Drivepool accomplish this? I ask because WHS Vs 1 made similar claims when the OS got corrupted a couple of years ago. I reinstalled ....it was not pretty. My next question is..... I have all files duplicated at the pool level. When the system puts the pool back together and see's the files.....will it understand that the files are duplicated...or want to duplicate them again? In other words...I already, through duplication, have 2 files on the drives. Will it recognize this...or will it want to make new duplications of the already duplicated files...giving me 4? I think that I know the answers here...but since I am risking all my data, I want to make certain...hence the paranoia. And of course..anybody that sees any flaws in what I am doing here, please point them out. Many Thanks

OK...so as I was sitting here and writing my problem, it occurred to me that....I had taken drive letters away from the other drives in the pool. On a hunch..... I added letters back, rebooted and the missing drive showed right up. But now this begs the question....if I have to assign drive letters to all the drives to get a new one to show up, doesn't that cap the drive limit? If not, how do you get the system to recognize new drives when you have removed drive letters from the existing drives in the build? I had created folders for the drives when I deleted the drive letter.

Honestly, I am suspecting this is more of a Windows 8 thing than Drivepool thing. I am hitting a wall though and am really hoping somebody can point me in the right direction. I can not be the 1st person building a pool that has run into this. So I am in the process of shutting down my old WHS Vers 1 Server. I have built the new server on the 8.1 Pro platform. All new Hardware.. (i5, Gigabyte z97x-ud3h-BK motherboard, 16 GB ram. OS running on samsung 850 EVO I have already installed a new HGST and WD Red 3TB. Both were new in the box and both showed right up. I put the drives in a pool and removed the drive letters as I am letting Scanner manage them. I wanted to pull a couple of newer drives from the old system to put into the new system. I have started with the first drive. I removed it from the old server according to procedure (30 hours later, it is out.) Seems simple ...right? Here is the problem. I can not get Windows 8, Drivepool or anything else to recognize the pulled drive on the new build. The Drive is a 2TB WD RED. I thought maybe the drive had failed so I plugged it into my Windows 7 PC. The PC saw the drive. I deleted the allocation, reformatted, made a simple Primary Partition on the drive in NTFS. I assigned it a letter. It is reading basic. The drive is behaving exactly like I think that it should on Windows 7. On Windows 8, it is not even appearing in Device Manager. There are no alerts in Device Manager making me think something is missing. The drive is not showing up in disk management. Of Course it is not showing up in Drivepool or Scanner/ How is it that I can see and completely utilize this drive in a Windows 7 machine and not even get it to be recognized in Windows 8.1 Pro? I have tried different sata cables and different power connections..nothing. What am I missing here? Thanks

I am building a new server and it will be in the basement. I am moving over from an old Vers 1 build and typically I would monitor it from the office...(same LAN...different area in the house) So I see that you can log into any Scanner app running on the LAN ....but you need to do it from a scanner app on the PC you are on? Does this mean that I need 2 licenses for Scanner...one for the Server and the other for the PC in my office to monitor the server? What are my options here?

I do plan on having both DrivePool and Scanner installed. Seems like a small price for something fairly critical...especially when you are dealing with larger, and sometimes hard to replace files. Thanks for the information.

I am building a new server and plan to use Drivepool. I am a little foggy on a few things though. I get that there is "theoretically" a Pedabite limit due to Windows constraints. And I get that I do not have to assign every hard drive a letter in Windows. And no, I do not have 26 drives...but I like to know my options and limits. Also, even at 10 or better drives, that screen would get cluttered. So...my questions are... If I do not assign letters to the drives, how do I locate a drive if it has failed? And frankly, even with letters assigned to the drives...coming from Server Vers 1 with Wireframe, it is nice to have some grahical way to see where in your setup the failing drive is. Is there any way or any add on to do this with in Drivepool?