Chris Downs

Is this for video editing? If so, you might want to consider larger SSDs for the cache, or using a non-pooled SSD for editing purposes and moving the files when you're done (the file you are creating - the source material will be fine left on the pool as you're only reading).

You mentioned SnapRAID - could you post how that is set up as it might help? This seems like an overly complex arrangement on the face of it... what is your end goal for the setup? A Drivepool that has an SSD landing drive is clear, but what is SnapRAID doing that you need to hide files from it?

This is not RAID striping and doesn't claim to be. When you did your 2 transfers, did each transfer reach the speed of ONE drive? If so, that's working as intended. If you only got half then you may have an issue. ie, was it 150M/s per transfer, or was it more like 75M/s each? Theoretically, if you have 4x copies of your files, then you should be able to transfer 4 *different* files at the same time at near the top speed of each drive (not the combined speeds) - assuming the SATA interface can handle the IO. You said it yourself: your drives are identical models, and therefore have almost identical latency and performance, so of course the algorithm will flick between them as the tiny differences fluctuate. It makes no difference to the final resulting transfer speed, which will be the speed of the disk the file is currently being read from. A case could be made for adjusting the sensitivity perhaps, for power-saving reasons, but otherwise I can't see a bug here. Worst case, a feature request for tweaking a system to the most power-saving setup possible (if you don't want to wake 4 drives from standby to transfer 1 file, for example). If you need the fastest possible transfer speed for an individual transfer, then you need SSDs or RAID. (Incidentally, did you know you can use smaller SSDs as "landing drives" in Drivepool? Available as a free plugin, which really helps with write speeds).

Now try copying multiple files at once. It's more about picking the optimum drive for a given transfer at a given moment, than maximum single-transfer speed.

I've been testing CloudDrive for this purpose, and it seems to work well. Created a local-source cloud drive, then it can be added to a pool in DrivePool. Not sure about performance vs BitLocker, as I only use it to back up documents and photos.

The time has come for more space in my Plex server... At present, it has three 4TB drives (just consumer grade). I was going to stick to 4TB drives (or maybe the 6TB WD reds), but "upgrade" to NAS versions, but I've been wondering about the 8TB archive drives from Seagate. Has anyone been using them for a decent amount of time with Drivepool? In theory they seem ideal for a Plex server, mostly used for reads. They also seem very good value in cost/TB. I reckon I'm using space at a rate of about 3.5 to 4TB per year now. A 4TB drive is about £109 at present. The 8TB is £178, which is £89/year if I assume 4TB/yr. It's clearly better value. However, I do wonder about whether the archive drives are suited to a system that can either run continuously, or be powered up and down fairly regularly (it varies but once a day is usual). I welcome thoughts and advice on this!

Where does one get these latest versions? I can only find .403.

Ok thanks. I am trying one last thing. Currently at step 4 at the time of posting. 1) Disable thumbnails 2) Search for and delete any "thumbs.db" files (there were some) 3) Re-enable thumbnails (after reboot) 4) Defrag/consolidate individual disks in the drivepool (all were 1-2% except the 5th one which was 4%) 5) Open photo folders to rebuild thumbnails - will take a while... 6) Reboot and check thumbnails work without rebuilding If the above doesn't work I'll get those logs uploaded.

Just adding my interest in Mega being added at some point :-)

Hi all. My photos going back many years are on my nice duplicated drive pool. Recently (a few months, but hard to say as I haven't had much cause to view my photos) I've noticed that it's taking ages to show thumbnails in Windows Explorer (Win7 x64) for images on the pool. I noticed that there is no "thumbs.db" in the image folders - neither in the pool or in the "real" folder locations. It seems to be making the thumbnails over again after a reboot as I can see them appear one at a time upon opening a folder. Once a folder of images has been opened, it's nice and fast if I go back in later, but a reboot seems to lose the thumbnails somehow. I have tried wiping all thumbnails using disk cleanup, and then going into each image folder with the view set to "large icons" to rebuild the thumbnails - no help. I also then wiped thumbnails again and tried manually going in to every photo folder from the disk mount points (outside the pool) and viewing each folder with the view set to "large icons" to rebuild the thumbnails. This worked for a short time, but after a reboot it was back to being very slow again. What's happening to the thumbnails? Anyone else get this? It doesn't happen on non-pooled drives either. Identical 1TB drives in my pool of 5 disks (Seagate barracuda) mounted internally connected to the motherboard SATA ports (6Gbps) - Scanner reports no drive faults. My OS is on an SSD. Thanks!

Thanks, all working using manual. I did notice that the port number in the XML comment says "27515" and "28515" for DrivePool and Scanner respectively, but 2x525 is what is actually used in both cases - 2x515 is not in use by anything else either. Typo? Also, had to add the peers at both ends, otherwise I couldn't switch back to the local machine after connecting to the remote one.

Ah, thank you, a good work around. I can't work out why multicast discovery doesn't work though. I have a number of devices that use that, and they all work.

Hi, Been using Drivepool and Scanner on two machines for a little while now and it's great. However, I've noticed that I cannot use the remote management on either local machine to look a the other remote machine status. The drop-down list at the top of the Drivepool window (same applies to Scanner actually) only shows the local machine, and not the remote one. I have tried disabling all firewalls, but still no luck. Multicasting/Broadcasting is not blocked on my router either - only have packet-storm protection at 10Mbps or higher. Any ideas? Both machines run Win7 Ultimate 64-bit. Chris

Ah! Thank you, I had seen that site once before but forgot its name. Bookmarked now. :-)

Yeah I've look around at the 5-in-3 backplanes, but they are such a ripoff for what they really are. In the UK now, they've lept from £60 to £160, and even the "cheap" ones are still over £50. No way am I paying that for an empty box with almost zero electronics! You can get an external 5 bay RAID box for less than that! Same goes for the 6-in-1 2.5" backplanes - £80 each. It's annoying, as I can get a cheap 9-bay tower case (Sharkoon Rebel 9 Pro economy) that could be hidden out of the way and stacked with 15 3.5" drives (or even 54 2.5" drives... hmm), but the cost of the backplanes exceeds the cost of the rest of it. I have been looking on ebay at second hand rack mount cases. Ordering from outside the UK is a non-starter, with postage costing over £100. That leaves some £200 10-bay cases. I think I will end up getting the Rebel 9 case, or maybe the Node 804 if I have the cash, and trying to keep the drive count down to 8 or less. That way I can get away with x2 duplication and not have to go to x3, which would immediately demand that I get more drives to make up the usable storage capacity, which would lead to needing x4 dup... it could get very silly very quickly! :-)

If I get a second hand drive, I usually just use DiskPart to do a "Clean All", which writes 0s to the entire disk, wiping any kind of formatting leaving a fresh "uninitialized" disk. Then a quick format to NTFS, and then use a disk check tool to verify surface reads are ok. I use Scanner for that now. I realize that a "Clean All" doesn't map bad sectors like a full format does, but if you're going to be running a disk surface check afterwards anyway it saves a bit of time. I always found a format of a 4TB drive took longer than a simple clean all (a blind write of zeros to the entire disk). The other benefit is that the diskpart method clears any hidden partitions you might have missed by simply formatting the existing visible partition.

...to the Stablebit team. Recently discovered DrivePool and Scanner, and it's basically solved all my storage problems in one go. I had my disks in RAID arrays (RAID 0+1), which was a costly way of doing things! I have two main PCs - an HTPC and my personal one. I got the DrivePool+Scanner combo for both after testing DrivePool for the trial period on my virtual machine box (a ProxMox 3.3 machine). I have lots of unused 320GB, 500GB drives that just aren't suitable for RAID (size mismatch, manufacturer, speed etc), and DrivePool is going to make them usable! Now looking to put together a new build using DrivePool to fit more drives in to my media server. Currently got 3x4TB drives in the HTPC (was 2 in RAID mirror), but no room for more so it's got to move as my media collection seems to be growing exponentially, thanks to my GoPro and storing my Blurays as straight copy MKVs at 24-40GB per movie. Looking around at various hardware before committing to a case. But it will be such a money saver being able to slot in any HDD I have going spare when I need a bit more space. So a big thank you for you guys - you've made things so much easier and I can concentrate on the hardware I want rather than worry about how to manage the data security. Already got a friend to buy the combo too, and he's just as pleased after struggling with storage solutions - especially having recently lost a 2TB drive that wasn't duplicated... ouch.