Jump to content

gtaus

Members
  • Posts

    285
  • Joined

  • Last visited

  • Days Won

    20

Everything posted by gtaus

  1. In the past, I used to buy drives of all different brands. My experience is that all drives, regardless of brand, will eventually fail. This typical happened to me about 1 month after the warranty period ended. Now I am buying generic white label drives from GoHardDrive.com and they seem to work as good as any brand name drives I used. Currently, I find the new 3TB HDDs with 2 year warranty at $40.00 is the best price/gig point. Already mentioned is that large TB drives will take hours and hours, if not days, to remove files off a failing HDD. Unfortunately, most of my HDDs that have failed give little to no warning. However, I recently had a disk that started to fail, and the free disk monitoring program Hard Disk Sentinel correctly caught it in time for me to remove about 90% of the data off the drive before it completely died. That saved me a lot of work in restoring from an offline backup drive. Thankfully, DrivePool saves complete files on a drive and does not just stripe data across multiple drives. So you have a much better chance on a full or at least partial recovery with DrivePool. When I was running Windows Storage Spaces, 1 drive failure wiped out my entire 26 drive pool, despite being set up for drive failure. That was a massive loss of data and is now why I am using DrivePool. At worse, you only lose data on the one failed drive in DrivePool. As stated, with DrivePool you can enable folder duplication for important files. I have my financial data folders set to duplicate 3X, so any 2 drive failure in my DrivePool should not affect my important financial data. Those data files are relatively small. I also use a free cloud backup service for important files in case of house fire, etc... When I had that drive failure in DrivePool, it correctly used the duplication files in the rebuild. I am not a big fan of shingled drives, either. But, in my case, my DrivePool is mainly my media storage center and most files are write once, read once, and maybe just sit there for years.... I think even shingled drives will hold up to that limited use. So I will use the cheaper shingled drives in DrivePool if it saves me money, but only because I have offline backup drives with my original media files.
  2. I don't know if this will work for your situation, but I recently had to move lots of data (TB's of movie files) into my DrivePool. The standard Windows Explorer copy/move of bulk files is, like you said, pretty much a babysitting manual copy/move job. The first problem Windows Explorer hits in the bulk transfer will stop everything and wait for you to clear the error box before it will continue. I had about 10 hours of files to move to DrivePool, I set it up to move the files overnight, but it snagged a problem only 30 minutes into the transfer and stopped. Hardly any files were moved. Since that experience, I now use the free TeraCopy for my large bulk file transfers. TeraCopy has a number of advantages over Windows Explorer. First, and foremost for me, it queues up all the files in a transfer list. If TeraCopy hits a problem with a file transfer, it will mark that file in the queue, skip over it, and continue on with transferring all the other files in the list. In my overnight example, it transferred all the files except 1 file that was corrupt. In the morning, all I had to do was look at the one file that errored out on the transfer. Much, much better than Windows Explorer. Teracopy also has a checkbox for verifying files after a copy/move. Of course, this doubles your transfer time with a verification on each file, but for important files that you want verified it works great. I almost always use the verify command on files I transfer to archive backup drives. It takes a little longer, but I really don't care as it does it in the background and I don't have to babysit TeraCopy. How are you measuring the balancing transfer speeds of DrivePool? The read and write status on my DrivePool GUI does not register any disk speeds when DrivePool is balancing the pool in the background. I know it is working because I can see the lights flashing on my USB HDDs, showing activity, and balancing will list the % of completion. But I don't see anywhere the speed is measured for balancing in the background. In my case, I am not very concerned about the speed of background balancing as long as it gets done correctly. I use DrivePool mainly for my media center file storage, so I don't need really fast transfer speeds. Having said that, I added a 248GB SSD to the front end of my DrivePool and that is very fast. I set the SSD Optimizer to re-balance only when there is at least 100GB of data to move. Essentially, I now have a 100GB SSD cache for my files, and if/when I reach 100GB threshold, DrivePool re-balances the data off the SSD in the background and I don't even notice it. You did not mention any SSD on your DrivePool, so I would encourage you to look into the benefits of front loading your files to a SSD. It really works great for me. Obviously, once you transfer more data than your threshold (100GB in my case), the transfer speed will slow down to the read/write speed of your USB drive(s) because DrivePool will not attempt to overfill the SSD and will switch over to writing to the slower USB drives directly until the SSD flushes its cache. DrivePool works great, and it is even better with a SSD on the frontend. Anyway, using TeraCopy and a SSD on the frontend of my DrivePool has made everything easier and faster for me.
  3. I have a number of older <500GB USB HDDs that are sitting in the closet. Wondering if I should put them in a DrivePool, use them as offline archive backups, or just junk them? Given that you can get a new 3TB HDD from Goharddrive.com for <$40.00, I am having doubts if those old USB HDDs are even worth keeping. Factors I am considering are cost of operating the older USB HDDs. They are rated at 12v * 2 A = 24 watts. 24 watts at 24/7/365 at my rate of $0.10 kwh = $21.03 per year. Some of my oldest USB HDDs are only 160 GB, so it hardly seems worthwhile to keep those drives online in DrivePool. However, if the HDDs power down when not in use, that might tip the balance to using them in a DrivePool. I am coming from Windows Storage Spaces which keep the disks spinning all the time, which is why those old USB HDDs ended up in the closet. It was less expensive to replace many older USB HDDs running 24/7 with a single HDD in Storage Spaces. But with DrivePool, are the USB HDDs allowed to spin down and go into sleep mode? If they are allowed to go into sleep mode when in DrivePool, then it might be worth keeping them as an online archive pool. As to keeping the older HDDs as offline archive backup drives in the closet, I am thinking that it is a waste of space as I could easily replace a box full of those old drives with a single new 3TB for $40.00. If I have to, I could just junk those older USB HDDs. Personally, I like to use anything I buy until it wears out or dies. I was hoping to use those older USB HDDs in DrivePool, but not if it is cheaper just to buy new HDDs with much larger capacity and even lower energy costs. I am sure I am not the first one to have this issue. Any thoughts welcomed. Thanks.
  4. gtaus

    Plugin Source

    Yes, I think that would work. I am also trying to think of how to best use my near end of life HDDs. I have a number of older <500GB USB HDDs that are sitting in the closet. Wondering if I should put them in a DrivePool, use them as archive backups, or just junk them. Given that you can get a 3TB HDD from Goharddrive.com for <$40.00, I am having doubts if those old USB HDDs are even worth keeping. I think I might pose that question as my own thread to see what other people think.
  5. gtaus

    Plugin Source

    I was thinking of those hybrid drives that have a small SSD on top of a conventional platter drive. Some of them have software that monitors frequently accessed files and learns how you use your system. Over time, the software moves those files to the SSD for faster access. I have seen this on YouTube videos where a gamer will load a game, once, twice and then a third time. You can see the load times decrease with each load until the program is essentially all on the SSD and reaches its maximum speed potential. Likewise, if a file is no longer accessed, the software will place it back in the queue to move it back to the platter when more space is need for new files on the SSD portion. That's what I have read, anyway, but don't have any further insight.
  6. gtaus

    Plugin Source

    No, I understood what you wanted to do. If you can figure out how to group drives so duplicates are written to other groups, that's great. The point I was trying to make is that I would expect the chances of more than 1 drive (in a group) to fail within hours of each other is very small. If you had a drive fail in a group, DrivePool would duplicate designated files to other drives. I usually replace dead drives as soon as possible, so old duplicates would essentially be sent to the newest drive when available. But even if duplicates were written to the drives in the same group, I still can't see much probability of multiple drives all dying in that group before the duplicate files were safely written elsewhere. At one time I had about 30 drives in my pool. I would expect to lose one drive due to end of life failure maybe every six months. I cannot remember losing two or more drives in the same week, let alone within hours of each other. But, I was buying different brand drives on sale and adding them to the pool as needed. I currently have 16 drives in my DrivePool, some as old as 8 years old and some purchased within the last 4 months. I have never purchased the same brand drives from a group, so I really cannot say that they might not all die within hours of each other, but I still have never seen that happen even when I was running RAID systems with matched drives. Again, I just want to say that duplication on a pool of drives does not replace a legitimate backup program where important files are safely stored offline, and preferably at another location in case of fire. That sounds great. I have already become a big fan of DrivePool and improvements to the system will always be welcomed.
  7. gtaus

    Plugin Source

    Years ago, I used to code. It seems to me that writing a good program is one thing, and writing good documentation that is helpful and understandable is another skill altogether. If you do write a new balancer plug-in, I hope your documentation is written for us "normal" people who may want to use the program but may not have the insight into how it all works. Yeah, I think that's what I referred to as unexpected results. I thought I understood how to use the "rules" of the balancer, but my results came out different. That is an interesting idea. I am thinking of SSD cache programs that are able to track which files are accessed most often and it moves them to the SSD cache over time. In you case, you would want them moved to your fastest drives. I know in DrivePool you can manually move files to the hidden PoolPart directory of any drive, and then DrivePool will automatically update the system. I can see that in some scenarios that moving certain files to faster drives would be a great benefit. In my case, I am using DrivePool as my media center storage and even my slowest drives are fast enough for streaming my files. For years I was using Windows Storage Spaces and found the packet writing software can be very fast, depending on how you set up the Storage Space (single, parity, duplicated, etc...). However, after my 3rd catastrophic failure of Storage Spaces and loss of TB's of data, I decided to try DrivePool. I found DrivePool was not as fast as Storage Spaces, but it was much more reliable and if a problem did occur with a pool drive in DrivePool, data recovery is possible. I was fortunate enough to have a pool drive fail while I was still in trial mode of DrivePool, and I was still able to salvage almost all the data off that drive and, of course, the other drives were all still just fine. In Windows Storage Spaces, I had one older small HDD fail in a pool of 26 HDDs, and it took down the entire Storage Spaces despite being setup for 1 disk failure. Storage Spaces failed to rebuild itself and with packets written all over the drives, there was no way I could recover my data. Getting more to your point, I added a SSD to my DrivePool and now my DrivePool is even faster (and still more reliable) than my Windows Storage Spaces ever was. There may be some way to manually designate your frequently accessed files to a SSD, or other faster drive, using the rules in the existing balancer(s). That would be great to use for programs that require TEMP directories for editing. In my case, I told the SSD Optimizer not to re-balance any data on my 248 GB SSD until there was at least 100 GB to move. Essentially, I made a 100 GB cache drive on the SSD for myself. All my new files go directly to my SSD and stay there until the 100 GB threshold is reached. I understand your thinking behind that, but I personally don't know if that is needed in DrivePool. DrivePool allows you to designate duplication as 2X, 3X, 4X, etc... for important files so you would have as many backups on your pool on as many drives you want. The chances of 1 drive failure is always there, but having 2 or more drives failing at the same time must be really low. In my limited experience with DrivePool, it handled duplication just fine after a HDD failure. So, I was very happy. I really don't think that drives purchased at the same time, from the same lot, would be likely to all fail within hours of each other. I expect DrivePool would be able to rebuild itself with duplication before the next drive would possibly fail. Having said that, duplication on any pool of drives is not a backup program. You could always have a catastrophic fire, lightning strike, etc... and lose your entire pool. So, you still need to have a proper backup program with important files stored elsewhere. In my case, my original media files are stored on HDDs in the closet. If I have a catastrophic fire in the house, then I have more things to worry about then lost movie files. My financial files, which are very small compared to the movies files, are backed up on a 5GB cloud service. Good luck on your project(s) and maybe you will be writing the next best balancer for DrivePool.
  8. I don't know if you are using any Scanner software to monitor your HDDs, but if you are not, I have found that free version of Hard Disk Sentinel does a great job in testing and reporting the drive health. I had problems with a failing drive that Hard Disk Sentinel correctly reported the problems and informed me to move all data off the drive. The estimated life of that HDD was reported to be in hours according to Hard Disk Sentinel, and I was able to move almost all data off before it died completely. If your HDD has bad sectors but otherwise is still a useable drive, the paid version of Hard Disk Sentinel has some kind of repair software that will block off the bad sectors and you can then use the rest of the drive. StableBit Scanner does a great job in monitoring the HDDs in DrivePool, but I don't think it has any method to repair bad sectors and return a drive back to good health. IIRC, StableBit Scanner mainly identifies a failing drive and automatically starts to move data off the drive and remove it from DrivePool. I agree that if your HDD is not showing up at all in Disk Management, you may have to pull that drive and try it on another computer. I only have Windows computers, but I also like the idea of trying it on a different OS to find out if the drive is able to load. Good luck.
  9. I had a Windows Mediacenter setup for a number of years and it worked great for me. Instead of upgrading the software for new broadcast standards, MS just dumped the concept all together. I do have 2 MediaSonic ProBoxes running on my old HP desktop/server running Windows 10 Pro and they work just fine in USB 3.0 mode. Having said that, I got both my 4 bay ProBoxes for $50 each on sale. I see the same ProBox costs over $100 each now. That's equivalent to $25 per HDD just to house the HDD. For that money, you could probably get some nice external USB 3.0 HDDs and a hub for a lot cheaper. Which is what I did and now have my two original 4-bay ProBoxes (8 HDDs) plugged directly into the computer and another 8 external USB 3.0 HDDs plugged into a hub. DrivePool handles everything just great.
  10. I have my DrivePool set up on my desktop server/computer with Windows 10 Pro, which is running 24/7. So I seldom reboot that machine. When I do reboot, I really don't see much of a delay in reloading DrivePool. If DrivePool goes into a remeasure mode, I can still access all my files. When DrivePool starts up, are all your pool drives found and online? The only delay in loading I have ever seen is when a drive(s) are not found on the reboot. I also have a 248GB SSD on my DrivePool. At first I had it set to balance whenever I had 1GB of data to move, but later I changed that to 100 GB before it will perform a balancing operation. That works better for me because now I use that 100 GB on the DrivePool SSD as a super fast cache drive. Works great for zipping and unzipping files on the SSD. Temp files are also directed to the SSD cache. If I want to re-balance the SSD before it hits 100 GB, then I just do that manually. It appears to me that limiting the re-balancing to only when 100 GB of cache data on the SSD needs to be moved has made my DrivePool and everything else faster.
  11. gtaus

    Plugin Source

    I have not had much luck customizing the balancing plugins. I thought I understood using Rules and such, but things never worked the way I expected. I think improving the balancing plugins would be great. If you do get source code and are able to extend the balancing plugins, please write instructions, examples, etc... so us normal people can get expected output. I don't mean to denigrate the current balancers, which work fine on my DrivePool, but if I want to customize the balancing process I am completely lost. Just curious, what features would you want to add/improve to the existing balancers?
  12. Well, there may be some scenario where drive letters are required. But with 16 HDDs in my pool, I am more than happy to assign names to the HDDs and not have to bother with drive letters. In theory, DrivePool is able to pool many more than 26 HDDs, so you would reach a point where you would run out of drive letters anyway. If you need to assign a drive letter to a DrivePool HDD that has a name only, you can easily do that in Disk Management and it will not affect DrivePool at all. Again, DrivePool does not read the drive letter at all. It only uses the hidden PoolPart directory for identification. As mentioned, you may have to restart your computer if you decide to reassign drive letters to your DrivePool HDDs, not for DrivePool itself, but sometimes other Windows program will not recognize the newly named drive without a restart. IIRC, Disk Management will warn you about that when you change/add/remove a drive letter.
  13. I don't know exactly why you are experiencing any delay on file transfers via SMB with DrivePool. I have my computers all using the DrivePool J: (on my system) as an assigned network drive. There is no difference between file transfers off DrivePool or any other network drive. I find the only limit in DrivePool is maybe the speed of the physical HDDs that the file was sitting on in DrivePool. Since I am using 16 HDDs on USB 3.0 for my DrivePool, that is the only speed limit I have noticed. I do have 1 SSD on my DrivePool, and obviously files in cache on that drive transfer much faster. I currently use Windows 10 Remote Desktop on my client computers to monitor my host server, and when I request a file from DrivePool, there is no delay at all. I did have an issue with SMB on my Amazon Fire TV Stick and Kodi. For some reason, Kodi was having a problem negotiating file lookups with SMB set on automatic. Evidently, there are 3 or 4 versions of SMB. I reset my Kodi to SMB version 2.0 and that solved my SMB issue specific to Kodi on the Fire TV Stick. But that had nothing to do with my computers.
  14. Yeah, old habits... When I removed the drive letters and just used drive names, life with DrivePool became easier with my 16 HDDs. It works better for me.
  15. I have 2 MediaSonic Probox 4 bay enclosures on USB 3.0, along with 8 other USB 3.0 external HDDs in my DrivePool and they all are working just fine. If I shut down or reboot my media server computer, the Probox units come back online and DrivePool sees all my HDDs. IIRC, there is a switch on the ProBox to select auto reconnect on start up, which I did initially when I set the boxes up, and have not had to touch them since. I am not currently using DrivePool Scanner, but Hard Disk Sentinel is able to read all the drives in the MediaSonic Probox units without any problems. It reports all the HDDs in the ProBox enclosures and also the S.M.A.R.T. of each drive. I find the USB 3.0 speed more than adequate for streaming my video files. And my media server is just an old HP desktop. Nothing at all special about it.
  16. FWIW, I just removed all drive letters from my DrivePool HDDs. DrivePool does not need a drive letter to recognize a HDD in the pool. It uses the hidden PoolPart directory. Removing drive letters on the HDDs makes a less cluttered display in Windows 10 File Explorer as it will only show HDDs with drive letters. That works great for me as I currently have 16 HDDs in my DrivePool. Those HDDs are dedicated to DrivePool and nothing else. So I don't need any drive letters assigned to them. Of course, when you remove the drive letters, Windows 10 File Explorer can longer "see" the drive normally. You would have to go back into Disk Management and reassign a drive letter. I track all my pool HDDs by name, such as DP01, DP02, DP03, etc.... which also corresponds to the physical location on my rack. I also put the drive name sticker on the physical drive/case for easy identification. The HDDs in my pool do not have drive letters assigned to them, as I stated. The DrivePool UI lists the names all in alphabetic order, which is very nice. However, if for some reason I want to reassign a drive letter to a particular drive, I just use Disk Management and look up the HDD by name. That is much easier then trying to track all the S/N of the HDDs. I am not using Scanner, so I am not sure if that program requires drive letters to work. Is there some reason you need/want to keep any drive letters assigned to your pool HDDs? I found DrivePool was easier to work with when I removed all those drive letters from my pool HDDs. Just my thoughts to your initial question on how to not drive yourself crazy with numerous drives in DrivePool.
  17. OK, I did not get a notification of your response. I followed your link and checked both boxes for the automatic response. I hope that was the problem and will get notifications in the future. Thanks.
  18. I am not receiving any notifications of replies to my threads/questions. I have set up my account profile with my correct email address, I have checked the box "Notify me of replies" and I have checked my Junk email box in Hotmail. But I cannot find any notifications from this forum. As I learn more about using DrivePool, I think I might be able to be more active in helping others. Being notified of responses would really help. I have just cleared my Junk box in Hotmail, so if someone would please send me a quick response, maybe I figure out if/where any notification is sent. Thanks.
  19. Yes, I think the ST6000DM003 is a SMR drive. However, after your post about the USB Seagate Backup Plus Hub HDD enclosure case probably being the problem with that HDD, I did remove the HDD from the enclosure and put it in my MediaSonic ProBox about a week ago and it is working flawlessly. So I am very happy that I was able to "save" the HDD for use in DrivePool. I am not a big fan of the SMR technology and understand why you don't want SMR HDDs in a pool. However, in my DrivePool, I have a 248GB SSD in front of the queue as cache. I have DrivePool set not to move any files until there is at least 100GB of files to optimize. In my mind, any file(s) written from the SSD cache to the SMR drive will not be fragmented, which would be better for the file(s) sitting on the SMR drive. Also, my DrivePool is set up mainly as a media storage server for Plex and KODI, so rewrite is not really an issue for me. It seems to work just fine for reads from the SMR drive. Sorry for the late reply, but for some reason I am not getting any notice of replies to my threads from this forum. I have checked the box to "Notify me of replies", I have checked my account profile for the correct email address, and I have even checked my Junk box in Hotmail, - but no notices from this forum.
  20. Yes, indeed, it is a Seagate 6TB USB Backup Plus Hub. It would be great if the HDD was good and that maybe only the enclosure is a "lemon" and causing my problems. Like I said, the HDD passed all my HDD diagnostic programs and reports Good Health at 100%. It did fail the Seagate Seatools long generic test, but if the enclosure firmware is randomly disconnecting the HDD, maybe that is why it fails that long test. CrystalDisk Info was: Model: ST6000DM003-2CY186 6001.1 GB Serial Number: WG500ZFK Health Status: Good S.M.A.R.T.: No alerts on anything. I don't know how to tell if this HDD is SMR or not, but since it is no longer under warranty, I have no problem cracking open the case and using the bare HDD in an empty slot in my MediaSonic ProBox. My enclosure is P/N 1XAAP2-500. I am currently moving all files off the 6TB HDD, but once done, I I'll crack open the case and remove the drive. I'll test the bare drive in my desktop HDD caddy, and if it passes, then I'll put it into my MediaSonic ProBox and add it DrivePool. Thanks for your response and for giving me some hope that the actual drive might still be good.
  21. Well, my excellent idea has proven successful, but maybe in an unexpected way. I created a 2nd DrivePool for my non-critical \movie\ data using my suspect 6TB USB HDD. Everything seemed to be working fine as I used Teracopy to move 6TB of \movie\ files to the new DrivePool using the verify command to ensure all files were 100% correct upon transfer. Everything worked fine for a day or two. Thinking I was good to go, I was about to add some more older HDDs to that 2nd DrivePool when, for whatever reason, that 2nd DrivePool went offline and I could not access it (only the suspect 6TB USB HDD on the pool at that time). Fortunately for me, I only had that one suspect 6TB HDD on the 2nd DrivePool at that time, so troubleshooting was fast and easy. Turns out, that suspect 6TB HDD has a tendency to shut itself down, go offline, and then throw the DrivePool into an error state. I was able to unplug the 6TB, plug it back in, and then both the drive and the 2nd DrivePool came back to life. This happened a couple more times yesterday, with that 6TB USB HDD going offline seemingly random, requiring me to unplug it and then plug it back in, so I decided it was just not worth the trouble trying to salvage use out of that 6TB HDD anymore. I am currently in the process of using Teracopy with verify to move all the \movies\ file off that 2nd DrivePool with only the 6TB USB HDD back to my original DrivePool. Turns out that creating a 2nd DrivePool using only that suspect 6TB USB HDD was a good idea because I quickly was able to determine there is indeed something wrong with it (despite all the diagnostic programs that scan it and report it is working fine). The only program that correctly determined the HDD was failing was Seagate Seatools using the long generic test (it passed the short tests). Unfortunately, the HDD is out of warranty so I will have to just eat the loss and move on. But, I would like to shout out to Stablebit Drivepool because, even though that 6TB HDD is failing, my data seems to be recoverable. I am currently about 50% complete on the file transfer off that suspect HDD and all files are intact. I can guarantee you that if that same suspect HDD had gone bad in my MS Windows 10 Storage Spaces setup, using data packets spread all over the pool, it would have most assuredly crashed the entire Storage Space and all my data would have been lost. How do I know that? Because I used Storage Spaces for years and after my 3rd catastrophic loss of data due to a HDD failure, I moved over to Storage Spaces. Despite having 2 and even 3 HDD failure protection on Storage Spaces, I lost entire pools of data when only 1 drive out 20 drives went bad. I guess I can attest to the fact that when a HDD goes bad in DrivePool, I have been able to recover my data off that failing HDD. For my few folder/files that require duplication, I have 2x or 3x duplication set and with DrivePool I don't worry that any 1 drive will crash my entire pool. Thanks to everyone for their responses and helping me work through this issue.
  22. Good points. However, after using Teracopy for awhile, I prefer to using it over MS Explorer for transferring large file sets. I usually set up my large file set transfer to occur over night. In MS Explorer, if it hits a problem of any kind, it stops at that point and waits for you to respond to a pop up error window. Obviously, if you have a 10 hour transfer set to perform, and MS Explorer hits a problem 30 mins into the transfer, you just wasted that night for transfers because you still have 9.5 hours uncompleted. Teracopy, on the other hand, will take that 10 hour transfer and when it detects a problem with a file, it will simply tag it as an error and continue on to the other files. In the morning, all 10 hours of the transfer are complete and maybe only one file was in error and is left in the queue as an error. Teracopy also has a verify checkbox where it calculates a hash code for each file transferred and then reads back that file and compares the hash code. If they match, all good. If they do not match, that file goes into the error list and remains in the queue. However, using the verify command doubles your transfer time as you would expect. As to the "suspect" 6TB HDD, which I think might be OK, I decided to just create a new DrivePool for my \movies\ folder starting with that HDD. I have all my original movie files saved offline on other HDDs, so if, for any reason, this 6TB HDD fails or starts to lose files, it will be no big loss as I have the original files safely stored on HDDs in the closet. I will just add the new drive letter to my sources in Kodi and Plex. Should work just fine. Also, since I am creating a new - standalone DrivePool - just for these media files, I will be adding my other older drives to that pool and use them until they die. Good use for old hardware. Also, solves the problem of using that suspect drive ONLY for the \movies\ files which are non critical.
  23. Thanks. Before I read your post, I wrote rules as you suggested, but when I started transferring files I noticed that all files were being sent to the empty 6TB "suspect" drive. I was not aware of your "NOTE that File Placement is only performed when balancing is triggered instead of in real time;..." So that probably explains why I saw all those files being written to the empty 6TB HDD. Also, the SSD Optimizer balancer plugin tweaks make sense. Those are the important things I did not know when I wrote my initial rules. When I saw all my new file transfers going to the 6TB HDD, I stopped the transfers and removed the 6TB from DrivePool. As you mentioned, they were probably only temporary files and might have been cleaned up upon a balance transfer. I am currently leaning towards using this suspect 6TB HDD only as a offline backup storage HDD. I can use TeraCopy and move files to the 6TB HDD using the verify command to ensure all files are 100% verified upon transfer. Probably a better solution for me than to risk using a suspect HDD in DrivePool as others have already mentioned. Also, DrivePool is working just fine, so I don't need to muck it up with a drive that I don't completely trust. Thanks for all the responses.
  24. That's my dilemma. I don't have complete confidence in the drive because it failed the Seagate Tools long generic test - but it has passed all other testing and Scanner shows no problems, Hard Disk Sentinel reports 100% health, etc.... Would not be an issue with a smaller HDD, but a 6TB HDD still is worth $$$ if it is good.
×
×
  • Create New...