[Bad sector bizarro-ness.]

On 9/6/2023 at 7:55 PM, fleggett1 said:

Hmmm.  I thought I ran another scan shortly after the long formats were complete, but a lot has been going on in my life for the past couple of months and I can't say with 100% certainty that I did so.

So, if the bad sectors were remapped as part of the long format and Scanner is now showing them green across the board, would you re-add them back to the pool or get rid of them?

You could put the drive through some read/write operations, perhaps using a disk benchmarking tool. See if any other issues arise - if not, probably fine to use again, but I'd keep unduplicated files off it. It's fairly normal for a disk to end up with bad sectors, and it sounds like it's re-mapped the disk to exclude them. Once the drive firmware has re-mapped, scanner won't see the errors (nor should it be capable).

[Can't sign in, and my apps are disconnected/unlicensed now.]

Got a license warning from Scanner and Drivepool, and I went to check on stablebit.cloud, went through sign-in (Google account), and it then hangs on a not-responding page: 

Then can't access the site at all unless I clear cookies ("sign out"). Tried on multiple browsers.
Also tried manually entering my license keys into Drivepool - says invalid (I guess because it can't reach the server?).

Help! 

[EDIT] Managed to log in from a PC offsite and remove everything from cloud - original activation ID works manually.
Guess it stopped liking my home IP address?!

 

[Drive(s) dropping from pool]

On 4/12/2022 at 11:56 AM, klepp0906 said:

intel system and i'm connected via HBA.  It seems to be in high stress situations though, have not seen it happen during general use that I can recall but its pretty frequent when accessing everything at once or under really heavy io

Check that the HBA is not overheating. If it's not in a high-airflow server chassis, you'll need a dedicated fan blowing air over it. Had this issue myself once - the controllers have puny heatsinks, as they are assumed to be in a chassis with 6000rpm fans.

[Pool files all deleted]

On 4/18/2022 at 9:53 PM, Fuse said:

Im not sure if DrivePool updated on its own but I haven’t messed with Drive Pool at all before my files were deleted. My drives show no data from drive pool and I have all the files unhidden. I have a recovery program that can pull all the deleted data but I’m still trying to figure out how all my Drive Pool data deleted all my files. I’m looking at building a NAS system and steer away from any pool software. 

Very odd! How do you know Drivepool deleted the data? I don't think it's something Drivepool can even do?

@Christopher (Drashna) any ideas?

[New Balancer - All in One]

On 4/18/2022 at 11:35 PM, Ultradianguy said:

Hi - I noticed there is a new balancer called All in One that seems to combine the SSD balancer with a few others. Has anyone used this one?  It seems it wasn't developed by Covecube so I'm wondering if it's reliable.

Also - I see there is a checkbox for archive drive in addition to Duplicate and Unduplicated.  I'm assuming if you pick SSD, it's to indicate you want to write cache - otherwise you can just treat it like any other drive.  So why would you check Archive? 

Archive is where data will end up after its time on the SSDs is up. I could be wrong, but I think Archive also means that if you were to re-balance data, the drives *without* archive set are prioritized for re-writes and data moving. Archive means "leave data here unless absolutely necessary". eg, if you have any SMR HDDs, you don't really want data being moved about on them.
 

[Moving Drive Pool from 1 computer to another]

On 4/20/2022 at 5:21 AM, Gilvagor said:

I want move my drives from one computer to another computer.  Do I just install drive pool on the new computer and transfer the licence and everything will be there?.

Thanks in advance,

 

Having done this a few times in the past, and having to bug support as a result... the best way is to uninstall Drivepool *first*, then make the move and install on the new machine... ;-) 

[Windows 10 support etc]

On 3/12/2022 at 2:41 AM, dsteinschneider said:

I'm thinking of trying Win10 again - I had issues with my Probox units dropping intermittently when I tried the upgrade in 2016. I'm using the Asmedia 106x card for the two eSATA connections. I'm thinking whatever driver issue was causing that is hopefully fixed. 

Since the machine has already activated Win10 I can just put the current drive aside and install a fresh Win10 on a new SSD boot drive - if I run into the same problems I'll go back to the current drive. 

The machine is dedicated to storage - no one logs on to it except for maintenance. I'm wondering how many here just stayed with Win7. Any comments appreciated. 

For add-in SATA PCIe cards, you should generally use the default Windows drivers, and NOT the manufacturer ones in most cases. Same goes for NVME. See screenshot. I've experienced the exact issues you describe when trying the official Asmedia drivers with PCIe cards - random issues that all disappeard on letting W10 decide on the drivers.

I would certainly not use W7 in 2022 either, regardless of whether or not users log in... if it's got Internet access, it's too risky. Once you de-clutter W10, it runs very nicely. There is a free tool called "Geek Uninstaller" that can remove programs cleanly, and the newer Windows Store style apps - works very nicely. There are also several tools for removing other clutter if needed, search "Windows 10 debloat".

[Any way to throttle the scanner?]

There is a Throttling tab in Scanner settings... tick "Do not interfere with disk access" and set a mid or high sensitivity. Set the priority to background if it isn't already.

[Why isn't XYZ Provider available?]

Any update on WebDAV? Is there a specific issue preventing it being added? It's been a while...

[OneDrive corrupting data since yesterday]

Same here, with OneDrive. So far, box and S3 are ok.

[Scanner not scanning]

On 4/24/2021 at 2:21 PM, fluffybunnyuk said:

Hi i get from the logs :-

Scanner.Service.exe    Warning    0    [Scanner] Error in scanning thread: Arithmetic operation resulted in an overflow.

Thus no scanning on any drives.

Any ideas?

Same issue here on multiple machines - must have been a bad update. Reset all settings from within Scanner, and it should start working again. 
 

Scanner.Service.exe	Information	0	[Ipc] Start scan of disk '\\.\PHYSICALDRIVE2'...	2021-07-29 14:54:16Z	234711190962
Scanner.Service.exe	Information	0	[DisksScanner] Added new disk \\.\PHYSICALDRIVE2 to queue and starting scan.	2021-07-29 14:54:16Z	234712171016
Scanner.Service.exe	Information	0	[Scanner] Starting scan of '\\.\PHYSICALDRIVE2' at 29/07/2021 15:54:16...	2021-07-29 14:54:16Z	234712208936
Scanner.Service.exe	Warning	0	[Scanner] Error in scanning thread: Arithmetic operation resulted in an overflow.	2021-07-29 14:54:16Z	234712265777
Scanner.Service.exe	Information	0	[Main] Disk \\.\PHYSICALDRIVE2 scan ended.	2021-07-29 14:54:16Z	234712266861
Scanner.Service.exe	Information	0	[Main] All disk scans ended.	2021-07-29 14:54:16Z	234712528965
Scanner.Service.exe	Information	0	[NotificationsCloud] Clear ScanningSurface	2021-07-29 14:54:18Z	234731905167

Log provided for reference, but I don't think it's anything other than a bad update at some point. Working fine after a reset.

[Gdrive upload speed]

On 1/4/2021 at 11:40 PM, sirmagne said:

Hello World.

Just installed CloudDrive, got it setup with gdrive. now im trying to upload 2tb but just get 73-105 mbit/s upload speeds. is ther somthign im missing.

Tryd to do search on the forums, but cam up empty 

im using basic settings, *right out of the box

Google Drive, and many others (especially free ones), have upload bandwidth restrictions (mb/hr) that you may be exceeding. The first stage is a limiter on speeds if you go over it. I believe the time window is 2 hours, but I do not know the current data figures. There also is a per-day limit of 750GB, but that's a hard cap that blocks uploading completely for a day. 

What speeds do you get if you use the native Google Drive app? As my upstream Internet is only 20mbit, I can't help by testing mine. I stopped using Google Drive in my Cloud Drive setup a while back, as even with my lower upstream speeds, I was hitting some restrictions (perhaps on number of files?) with Cloud Drive.

It may just be that you need to tweak the Cloud Drive settings, like block size etc, to reduce the number of files created?

[SSD Optimizer and v2.3.0.1144 Beta]

14 hours ago, AK96SS said:

But it does not show as an option anywhere in the 'Balancers' tab. What am I doing wrong?

Try this:
Get hold of "Geek Uninstaller" here: https://geekuninstaller.com/download
Use that to a) see if the plugin is in the list and b) remove all trace of it if it's there.
Then disable your AV software and re-install SSD Optimizer, and reboot. (This particularly applies if you use Windows Defender, as W10 20H2 has some significant security changes that have caused issues for many non-Microsoft programs.)

[SMART TOOLS WITH SAS drives]

On 7/5/2020 at 9:38 PM, Christopher (Drashna) said:

Sorry, yeah, still not supported.  Since it's not as much of a consumer tech, it hasn't been a priority.  

But yeah, I do agree, SAS support would be amazing.

 

On 10/13/2020 at 12:28 AM, Phatman113 said:

Just wanting to toss in my $0.02 on this.  It's definitely not so much among the consumer side of things, but there's definitely a missing data point in there.  I've noticed that HDSentinel has the ability to scan, but I'm not as big of a fan of their interface and it doesn't integrate with drivepool.  

 

I appreciate all the work that's been going into StableBit tools, but I'd really love to see this, even if it was sold as an additional license, an extra $10 for SAS integration or something...

I wonder, is this something that could be implemented by means of a plugin at all? Or does the API not expose/allow things at that level? If it can, then perhaps a community led solution might be possible, with a little guidance?

[Microsoft Storage Space Drives not detecting]

On 1/1/2021 at 1:46 PM, KlausTheFish said:

I have two Western Digital drives that i am able to view in the WD Dashboard that are in a RAID using Storage Space. StableBit Scanner only detects them as one drive labeled with the name "Microsoft Storage Space Device" instead of separate drives. I am able to pull the SMART check via WD Dashboad and not the StableBit Scanner.

 

Please add this functionality.

It can't be added. The "RAID" setup presents the resulting drive to the OS as a volume - it has no SMART data. The individual disks may well be accessible as hardware devices, but they do not present as accessible volumes/drives. WD Dashboard works because it is specifically designed to access the relevant hardware at a low level. Each manufacturer does this a little differently, so it's probably not feasible to add to Scanner, which works on a software level.

[Need help with performance]

You'll need to find another cloud provider - google drive has a bandwidth and speed limiter. If you go over it, they cap your further.

[Not balancing onto new drives]

12 hours ago, AlanO said:

@Chris Downs, Disk Space Equalizer is the only balancer I'm using and it is above all others in the list. Based on the comment quoted above, my understanding is that new files will still be placed on the drive with the most free space and Disk Space Equalizer would still then move the files to another drive after that. So, while the end result may be the similar, it's not the same as having the new file initially placed on the drive with the least % used.

Having this balancing done after the fact results in an extra data transfer, once to the pool(to the drive with most free space) and then to the drive with the least % used. This extra step can take considerable time when double digit terabytes are involved. So, my inquiry was really more about being able to have new files initially placed on the drive with the least % used, provided the disk has sufficient space of course, and not having the need for balancing after the fact.

To be honest, I have not enabled the option to balance immediately as I was under the impression this wouldn't help as it would still have to balance after new data is written to the pool.

I see, so then you need the opposite option in the balancer - "Equalize by free space remaining", I think? This should then give you what you want, for incoming new files?

[Not balancing onto new drives]

7 hours ago, AlanO said:

@Christopher (Drashna),

I just started evaluating DrivePool and see there is still not an option for real-time balancing for file transfers based on percent used. 

I'm confused - if you have real time balancing turned on, then this option has existed since... forever? Just make sure the disk space equalizer is above all other plugins besides Scanner (if you use that).

[Duplicate an SSD, but always force read off the SSD?]

9 hours ago, sfalexi said:

I'm looking to add my gaming SSD to the drivepool to take advantage of the duplication (in the event of some wierd SSD corruption, I still have latest game data and don't have to redownload).

Is there a way to add the SSD to drive, prevent it for being used as a drive to store duplicate data, and also ALWAYS force Steam or U-play or whatever to read/write from the SSD, and not try to "read stripe" and read/write files from the duplicated portion which is on a WD Red?  Thanks!  I also have another question, but it's totally unrelated so it's in a separate thread.

 

Lex

 

EDIT - How's this for a possible solution.... a little convaluted... but hear me out....

Add the SSD to the drivepool.  Uncheck duplicated and unduplicated in Drive Usage Limiter, therefore (if this does what I think it'll do) keeping any files being written to that drive unless I manually go to the hidden directory and write the files myself.  Then point Steam, U-play, and any other programs to the direct path (through the hidden directory) of THAT drive, not to the pooled letter.  Therefore forcing them to access the SSD directly... but the contents of the SSD ALSO are viewable, and therefore able to be duplicated, by the larger drivepool?  Does that seem like it'll work?

No, that won't work at all.

You can't duplicate and then force reads to only come from one disk. You would need a second SSD, and some file placement rules so that only your game folders are allowed on those disks.

 

edit: why not just make a scheduled task to run a backup of the relevant game folders on the SSD, and copy them to the Drivepool in a "Game Backups" folder? Just a little batch file with some copy commands, then Task Scheduler to run it once a week?

[Does it respect file placement while still duplicating?]

8 hours ago, sfalexi said:

[1] To put it simply, I have a file placement rule that my Plex movies that I rip go to Disk 2 of a three disk pool.  If I put file duplication on, will it always put my "original" copy that I drag into the plex folder on disk 2, and THEN duplicate it elsewhere?  

[2] Second question, any way to 'rebalance' so if Disk 2 (my movies disk) is carrying some duplicated files from disk 1, it will move those out of the way (maybe to disk 3) to accommodate new movies I want to put on disk 2?  This would still allow those disk 1 files to be duplicated, and still give priority to my file placement settings of where to put my movies.  But it'd require it moving ALREADY duplicated files.  Thanks!  I also have another question, but it's totally unrelated so it's in a separate thread.

[1] Yes, it will only move the data from disk 2 if a balancing rule causes it to be moved (if you have disk space equalisation turned on, for example). Otherwise, it will stay put.

[2] You could just set the drive-overfill plugin to 75-80%? Then if any disk reaches that capacity, it'll move files out? Personally, I assign a pair of landing disks for my pools. Two cheap SSDs where incoming files get dumped. DP then moves them out later, or if it fills up. Note that the disks should be larger than the largest single file you would put on the pool.
If cost is an issue, you could try the following setup with existing hardware instead:

• Install the SSD optimizer plugin
• Tell DP/SSD Opt. that Disk 2 is an SSD and un-tick the "archive" setting
• Make Disk 1 and 3 "Archive" drives
• Change your file placement rules so that only unduplicated files go on Disk 2, and only duplicated files go on 1 and 3

That way, all new incoming files get put on "Disk 2", then later when your duplication/balancing rules engage, it will move the data off of Disk 2 entirely, and duplicate to 1 and 3.
This assumes you do not have "real-time duplication" enabled. If you still need the total capacity of the 3 disks, then perhaps a small investment in a 120/240GB SSD to use as a landing drive might be a good idea, and substitute "Disk 2" with "SSD/Disk 4" in the above setup?

[Migrating from physical to hyper-v]

11 minutes ago, denywinarto said:

Thanks chris, how long have you been doing it? Is it stable enough?

Also there is something i forgot to ask, were you able to passhthrough the igpu as well?

I will need it for emby and blue iris i think

 

You should be able to pass the iGPU, but I am using old Xeons so I can't test it. Keep in mind that you then lose the host video if you do that. I'm no Hyper-V expert though, I use Proxmox.
I do know that all four of these options need to be ticked when adding a PCIe GPU in proxmox:

Is the Hyper-V equivalent obvious to you? I've only ever used Hyper-V on my local PC for testing and no passthrough.

 

I have been testing VM pass-through of my HBAs for over a year now, and just moved my bare-metal machines over to VMs as the setup passed my testing to my satisfaction. Remember to de-activate your bare-metal Drivepool/Scanner licenses FIRST though... or you'll end up pestering Mr Drashna to get that mess fixed.

[Trial user with some pre-purchase questions (involves ReFs & bit rot)]

On 7/15/2020 at 5:07 PM, DaveBetTech said:

Thank you again @Chris Downs for your feedback.

I'm definitely interested in knowing how I can address bit rot and corruption with DrivePool. I'm not clear how both / either are addressed. I see how it scans for bad sectors, but more curious about periodic checking of files against a CRC like in ReFs or maybe compared against each other, dunno. Just want to maintain data integrity over the long term. I have had some of these files since the mid 90s.

Thanks in advance for anyone who can provide information about this!

No problem. Here is a somewhat old thread on ReFS: https://community.covecube.com/index.php?/topic/3296-refs/#comment-22766

There seemed to be some concern over different ReFS versions not being compatible (yikes!), so not sure if that is still a concern?

[Migrating from physical to hyper-v]

On 7/13/2020 at 5:03 AM, denywinarto said:

I'm in a process of migrating to hyper-v 2019, been reading some forum post but still a bit unclear about the process.

1. Should i passthrough the drives or the HBA card? With DDA looks like it's possible to just passthrough the HBA?

2. I read SMART isnt passed if i passthrough the drives, is this also the case for HBA passthrough?

 

I pass through the HBA for Drivepool. I use Dell Perc H310 cards and the SMART data is all visible, as it should be because my Windows VM has direct access to the HBA.

 

edit: Wrong Chris I know, but hopefully helpful?  

[New user questions]

On 7/15/2020 at 7:21 PM, whitewraith said:

I am new to this product. I added a drive with existing files on it to start a new pool. How can i get drive pool to see those files? It appears that it assigned a new drive letter to the drive but now i see that drive twice, once as the original drive E and now as a pool drive K:  

Just move the files you see in "E:", to the new drive "K:".

You only have one disk in the pool so far?

[BIOS upgrade locked me out of StableBit]

On 7/15/2020 at 10:42 PM, wakirk2002 said:

What I am needing is for this key to be deactivated so I can reinstall StableBit.

Can someone please tell me how to get in contact with them without the "Contact Us" link because I keep getting the above error. 

It's odd that the form isn't working for you - I literally just used it the other day. Try another browser to be sure?

But just tag @Christopher (Drashna), or use one of the contact methods in his profile:

He will help you sort it out.