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I am only in my Scanner trial period, but I thought Scanner was for individual HDDs only - not the entire DrivePool. When I run scanner, it loads each and every drive in my pool, but it does not load the DrivePool itself. I am guessing that Scanner, in your example, sees the 146TB DrivePool, but of course cannot read the S.M.A.R.T. data because there is none on the DrivePool itself. The S.M.A.R.T. data resides on each individual HDD. Might this be causing your problem? BTW, how did you get Scanner to see your DrivePool volume? I don't even see that option when I run Scanner. It loads all my individual HDDs, which is what I expected. But I guess it's not too important because Scanner does not seem to like scanning your DrivePool volume.

I am currently halfway in my trial period of Scanner. I now have 23 USB HDDs in my DrivePool. Over the past 2 weeks, Scanner has been slowly scanning the HDDs and reporting their health. So far, the drives are reporting healthy. I also figured out how to Custom Name my HDDs so that they make sense to me. I have my HDDs in DrivePool named DP01, DP02, DP03... DP23. So, Scanner with Custom Name and DrivePool were both using the same names for the HDDs. I shut down my server for some routine maintenance, no big deal. However, when I rebooted the server, all my Scanner HDD data seems to have been lost. Drives that had completed scanning and reported as healthy are back to 0% in scanning progress with no status on Health. Maybe even worse, all my Custom Names in scanner are back to the Default Name of the HDD so I will have to Custom Name each and every one of my 23 USB HDDs again. This situation is a deal breaker. For some reason or another, I usually end up shutting down and restarting my server at least once a month. If Scanner loses all Drive data on each reboot, that is a major issue for me. Please let me know if this is normal operation of Scanner, or if there is some backup saved that can be used so I don't have to start from square one on each reboot. Any help appreciated.

Yes, it's best to write down your S/N of the HDD on each and every order invoice. Having said that, GoHardDrive also records your drive's S/N and if you forgot to write it down on that invoice, GoHardDrive will let you know if it's a HDD that you bought from them. I think GoHardDrive is the leader in support and never hesitate to order from them.

Answering my own question... In Scanner, if you right click on the default model number of the drive listed under the "Name" column, you have a pop up box option of "Disk Settings..." Click on that and select "Use a custom name" option in the next box. Then, simply rename your drive to whatever you want. In my case, I renamed my drives back to DP01, DP02, DP03, etc... Now I can make sense of the Scanner GUI with my 20 USB HDDs custom named to match my DrivePool naming convention.

Just a quick follow up. I mounted all my DrivePool drives into a mount folder as you suggested, and it did indeed solve the issue of being able to catalog each drive. I had been trying to figure out a solution to that problem for a couple of years, and your method is easy to implement, and it works. Thank you very much for that suggestion.

That sounds like a much better solution to my problem than I have heard before. I have never mounted drives in a folder, but if I can catalog the individual drives in your type of setup, I will be switching over to that system. Thanks.

I have 20 USB HDDs in my DrivePool. They are named, DP01, DP02, DP03...DP20. In Scanner, under the "name" column, it displays the model number of the drive which is not helpful. i.e. I have multiple drives with model number "Seagate Expansion Desk SCSI Disk Device." I see there is an option to show the serial number, but again, for 20 HDDs, not so helpful. Is there a way to display my drives as DP01, DP02, etc... on the Scanner GUI? Thanks for any help.

Yeah, I don't how you would do that. DrivePool uses NTFS on the drives, whereas Storage Spaces completely takes over the drives and strips the data to its pool of drives. I'm sure you could transfer the files out of Storage Spaces into DrivePool, but I don't think you could add Storage Spaces drives themselves into DrivePool. Windows Storage Spaces can be set up without any redundancy. Problem is, you lose one drive, or even have a problem with one drive, then all your data is lost - forever. Been there, done that. DrivePool is better for a no redundancy volume. If you have a problem with a failing drive, you might be able to transfer all the good files off the HDD before it completely dies. I had that happen a few times with some old HDDs. I hit a few bad sectors on a failing drive, but only lost a couple of files and the remaning files on the drive were able to be transferred off before complete failure. If you have a complete failure of a HDD, then you only lose files on that specific HDD. All the other drives in DrivePool are unaffected, whereas Windows Storage Spaces loses the entire volume because of the packet striping across all drives. Having said that, DrivePool will split files in folders among different drives in an attempt to equalize storage space on the drives in the pool. For example, if you have a folder of an Artist - Greatest Hits, you might have one or two tracks on each HDD in the pool, depending on how many HDDs are in the pool. In that case, of a total HDD failure of one drive, you might lose a couple tracks from that Greatest Hits CD. For that reason, I always add .PAR2 files to my music folders which allows me to verify if all files are still intact in DrivePool, or if my MultiPar program can rebuild that folder, or if I have to reload that CD from my backups in storage. If you have a limited number of folders that you would like to have duplication on, in DrivePool you can increase the number of copies stored down to the folder level. So, if you completely lost a drive in DrivePool, in theory, DrivePool should be able to rebuild those duplicated folders when it rebuilds. In reality, it actually worked for me, as I have a few folders in my DrivePool Home Media Server that I designated as duplicated and DrivePool rebuilt those lost files in the rebuild. That saves me time for those folders that I absolutely do not want to lose on my server. I have not found a good program to catalog each individual drive in my pool where I don't have drive letters assigned to the drives. That would come in useful if you had a HDD failure, and then you call up the catalog and see what files you actually lost on that drive. But, I have 20 USB HDDs in my DrivePool and I don't have drive letters assigned to each drive. DrivePool does not require drives to have drive letters and not having drive letters to the DrivePool drives makes my Windows Explorer interface cleaner. In short, I have found DrivePool to be much better for a no redundancy volume compared to Windows Storage Spaces. In any case, online server volumes should not be considered backups. You might not need redundancy on your online server files, but important data should have an offline or cloud backup.

Nearly a year later, and I am getting the same "Connecting to Service" time counter. Eventually, it times out and tells me to restart my computer. With 20 USB HDDs in my DrivePool, it takes more than a few minutes to shut down, restart, and add all my HDDs back to the pool. For some reason, I cannot restart the computer with all USB HDDs connected. I have to add each USB HDD, one at a time, into DrivePool or my computer just locks up. In any case, DrivePool was up and running with all 20 USB HDDs in DrivePool, then I attempted to load and run Stablebit Scanner and it just hangs. Gone through 2 reboots at this point. Will try to load Stablebit Scanner before rebuilding DrivePool with all the 20 USB HDDs to see if that makes any difference.

I ran Windows Storage Spaces for about 7 years before I had my third Storage Spaces massive failure and data loss. I switched over to DrivePool a couple years ago and it just works so much better for me. When Storage Spaces works, it's a good system. When you have problems with Storage Spaces, you often have massive data loss due to the stripping method of placing data on all disks in the pool. Even with Parity or Duplicated Storage Spaces, I had massive data loss with a single HDD failure in my Storage Spaces pool of ~20 HDDs. That should never happen, in theory, but it did. Anyway, I have had much better results with DrivePool, and if you have a HDD failure in DrivePool, it only affects the data on that specific HDD. If you have a drive letter assigned a HDD, and you add that HDD to DrivePool, you will still see the original Drive Letter under My Computer. I know in Windows Storage Spaces, adding a HDD to your pool removes that HDD from your view because Storage Spaces takes total control over your HDDs and they cannot be used for anything else. In DrivePool, you can add a HDD to your pool, AND, you can still use that drive as a normal drive on your computer system. That might be an advantage to you in some setups. In my case, I add my HDDs to my DrivePool and remove the Drive Letter of the specific HDD so that it does not show up under My Computer view. But I have 20 HDDs currently in my DrivePool so that would make a very messy My Computer with all those drives and drive letters showing up in the listing. I only want to see my DrivePool drive letter (F: in your setup) and not all the other 20 HDDs that are in that pool. If I have any problems with a specific HDD, I can always reassign a drive letter to that drive using the Disk Management program. Assigning or removing drive letters to your HDDs in DrivePool has no affect on how DrivePool works. That's a very big plus in my opinion. IMO, there are a number of advantages of DrivePool over Windows Storage Spaces. First, and foremost for me, is that DrivePool uses the normal NTFS file system for the pool HDDs, and if you have a HDD failure, it only affects data on that HDD. In Windows Storage Spaces, the data is written in packets across the HDDs in the pool. If you have a HDD failure in Storage Spaces, it can affect the entire pool because Storage Space might not be able to reconstruct the missing packets. In theory, Storage Spaces should be able to rebuild itself if you use Parity or Duplication spaces. In my case, Storage Spaces does not live up to its promise and I had massive data loss despite have both Parity and Duplication spaces on my system. In DrivePool, you can set the duplication on either the entire pool, or to specific folders. For example, I mostly use my DrivePool as my Home Media Server, and only have 1 file of the data so I can maximize my online storage (I have all data backed up on HDDs in my closet). I do have a few folders that I have 2X duplication, and I think I had one folder with 3X duplication. All that does is to let DrivePool rebuild itself on those folders with duplication faster if you have a HDD failure. In my case, I'll just grab my backup HDDs from the closet and put whatever files I want back into DrivePool. If you had a total failure in Storage Spaces, those HDDs cannot be rebuilt because of the packet writing system across multiple HDDs. You can't read a Storage Space HDD. That happened to me a number of times before I gave up on Storage Spaces. In DrivePool, if you had some kind of total failure, you could pull the physical HDDs and read them in another computer or desktop disk caddy because the data is stored in normal NTFS volumes. In short, I have found data recovery possible in DrivePool, whereas Storage Spaces it was not. Originally, I was disappointed with the write speed of DrivePool compared to Storage Spaces. DrivePool writes the entire NTFS file to a single HDD, and that is limited by the HDD write speed. In Storage Spaces, where it writes packets to multiple HDDs all at the same time, I used to get much faster write speeds. I solved that issue by adding a SSD to the front end of my DrivePool. Now, all my files are first written to my SSD at the SSD write speed, and later, it will flush the data cache to my slower HDDs in the background. Read speeds, for my Home Media Server, are not so critical for me. Again, Storage Spaces initially has the speed advantage on read speeds because because it can read packets from multiple HDDs at the same time. In DrivePool, you can enable Read Striping on data that is duplicated and that will boost your speed, almost, but not quite 2X the speed of one HDD. What I found more useful, is that in DrivePool I can clear my SSD cache with an initial re-balancing, and set the flush threshold high enough to hold a large temp working folder. That way, my temp data is both read/write on that folder sitting on the SSD in DrivePool. For example, I might set the SSD flush threshold at 100 GB, perform a re-balancing to flush the SSD of all data, and then set my video editing temp directory to DrivePool which will first use only the SSD for all data reads/writes up to that 100 GB threshold. Works good for me. Another option, is that I can just leave a drive letter assigned to my SSD, and use it both for my media editing software as a normal SSD drive AND still be used by DrivePool as my SSD cache. You can't do that in Windows Storage Spaces. Like I said, when Storage Spaces works, it works just fine. When you have a problem with Storage Spaces, you are on your own trying to figure out how to recover from your situation. Even MS does not pretend to offer any help. I came to not trust Storage Spaces after many years of use. DrivePool just works so much better for me. If I have problems with DrivePool, I can usually figure it out myself, or sometimes I might get a helpful response from the fourm. But, the point is, I have had very few issues with DrivePool, whereas I used to spend hours, days, weeks, and even months trying to get my Storage Spaces working correctly.

It's terrible to lose data. Having said that, I don't follow what your situation is. I have never had any data lost from adding a HDD to DrivePool. Is it your Drive D that you believe was formatted? That's the only drive that appears to have no data. On the top left corner of the Pie Chart DrivePool main page, you have 3 messages logged. You might want to click on that small pie chart and read what DrivePool has logged. Sometimes that gives you clues. Is there a reason you added your Drive C to your DrivePool? I know it's possible to add Drive C to DrivePool, but I personally never use my Drive C for any pools. I try to keep that Drive C from outside storage programs. As far as trusting DrivePool, well, it works better for me than my old hardware RAID setups, or when I used Windows Storage Spaces. I had massive data loses with a single HDD failure in both those other systems. In fact, even though I had triple redundancy on my Windows Storage Spaces, I had a single HDD failure and it destroyed my entire Storage Space volume. That was not supposed to happen. I switched over to DrivePool a couple years ago. I have had HDD failures using DrivePool, but it only affects the data on the failed HDD. Many times, I was able to physically remove the drive, plug it into a desktop caddy, and transfer almost all the data off that failing HDD. DrivePool is not a backup plan, but you can turn on duplication for the entire pool, or specific folders. In theory, that should allow you to rebuild your data faster when you add a new drive to the pool after a HDD failure. I find that useful for some data. Mostly, my DrivePool is used as my Home Media Server and I have all my data backed up on HDDs sitting in my closet. I mostly trust DrivePool to handle my server data, but like anything with computers, you really need to have a good backup plan to ensure no data loss if you have HDD failures. After running DrivePool for a couple of years, I only have single copies of media data on my DrivePool Home Media Server. If I lose a pool HDD, then I'll rebuild from my backup HDDs if still needed.

I know OP has closed this thread, but I wanted to add that I had issues with rebalancing after I replaced a failed HDD. Sometimes, shutting down the computer and rebooting will allow DrivePool to correct itself. On some occasions, a failed or missing HDD can shut off my SSD Optimizer balancing, switching my SSD to an Archive disk for some reason, so it never hits that rebalancing threshold I had set for the SSD write cache. I have had success with turning back on the SSD Optimizer balancer and telling DrivePool that my SSD is an actual SSD for the SSD Optimizer balancing purposes and not an Archive disk.

Are you using internal HDDs or external USB drives? Are all the drives showing up in Disk Management? I have 19 USB 3.0 HDDs in my DrivePool, and when I reboot my server, it is all too common that the computer cannot load all my USB HDDs in either DrivePool or Disk Management. It loads most of them, but not all. I'm sure it's a Windows thing. My fix was to buy a powered USB hub with individual on/off switches. After I boot up my server, I bring each USB HDD online, one at a time (takes about 30 seconds, each), and then all my USB HDDs will be recognized. It has been my experience that a weak or failing HDD may not load up along with the others. If you consistently have the same HDD not loading, that might be another area to consider. Also, I would suggest installing that missing HDD into a different slot or on a different USB port to see if that makes any difference. You could have a bad or weak cable on your motherboard or interface. Best wishes.

I think you should contact Stablebit sales directly, not via this forum, on licensing issues. Having said that, I have submitted a support request a number of days ago and have yet to receive any answer. Do you really want to run DrivePool on a company server, have a problem, and not get any support? There used to be a moderator on these forums who was very helpful, but obviously if you posted your question on 9 Aug 2022 and it is now 1 Sep 2022 without an answer, that should indicate to you that DrivePool may not be up to the support standards required by your company. I used Windows Storage Spaces for a number of years, but it has all kinds of bugs and absolutely zero support. I moved to DrivePool about 3 years ago and find DrivePool to be much better for me. But, I cannot remember the last time DrivePool was updated and wonder if anyone is actively working on improvements.

I have had similar problems. Sometimes it's just a bad cable, sometimes it was an old drive starting to fail, sometimes the multi HDD enclosure was failing. If your enclosure fan is not keeping enough air flow, then it could be that your drive(s) are getting too hot and randomly disconnecting. Another time I had an issue with more than one PoolPart on a HDD, and that caused all kinds of weird errors. I solved that issue by tansferring all the files off that HDD and giving it a low level format, wiping out everything, and then added it back to DrivePool. I am currently dealing with an issue where I have a USB 3.0 HDD that is overheating on extended writes. I switched that HDD to a USB 2.0 port, with much lower write speeds, and that HDD is no longer overheating. I don't know if it's the HDD drive overheating, or the enclosure is getting too hot. In either case, I've ordered a replacement USB HDD for DrivePool and will use the old USB HDD as a file backup to go into storage. Most of the time DrivePool behaves as it should, but when you have a problem, it sometimes takes a good bit of trial and error to find the cause. Of course, intermittent problems seem to be the worst to troubleshoot. Good luck.

If your computers are on the same network, then a simple copy and paste of the folders would work. If your computers are not connected, then you could use a USB stick or USB HDD, copy the file(s) to the USB device, and paste them to your destination directory on your laptop. I sometimes use my cloud drive (MS OneDrive) to share files on all my computers, connected to the same network or not, but I only have the free 5GB account. Good enough for many of the small text and app programs I want to share on all my computers. As long as you have an internet connection, your OneDrive files and folders will sync up for all your computers.

Thanks. I'll look into that. I think maybe you helped me more than I helped you. But, I hope someone comes up with a solution for you on your expanding DrivePool.

I understand what you want to do, but I don't have the answer with my limited knowledge using home based meida servers. What OS are you running? There may be some solution in higher priced enterprise based servers, but I would not know how to do it with DrivePool. I know DrivePool can work with sub-pools, but I think they have to be on the same server. Maybe not. I hope somebody can give you more direction. BTW, a 45 drive case?! I would be interested in what you use. I currently have 19 USB HDDs (80+ TBs) on my DrivePool, but I have problems loading all those drives on a reboot. I had to buy USB power hubs that have individual on/off switches for each port. When I reboot my server, I first have to turn off all my USB drives, then when the server is up and running, I have to turn on each drive, one by one, waiting maybe 30 seconds for each USB drive to be recognized by the OS before I go on to the next drive. If I could dump all those HDDs into one case and bypass my current USB problems, that would be great. If you can, let me know what you use so I can check it out.

I recently had a DrivePool HDD start to have problems on my home server and I was getting corrupted file error messages. i had DrivePool remove that HDD. Then I attempted to take that HDD to one of other client computers which run the DrivePool application for monitoring the server. When I attached the HDD to my client computer, it starts up another DrivePool on my client computer, which interferes with my ability to run diagnostic and repair programs on the HDD. I get locked out of certain repair functions because the computer tells me that drive is in use (by DrivePool). Is there a way to temporarily shut off DrivePool on my client computer(s) so I can attach a DrivePool drive to work on it? I stopped the DrivePool services in Task Manager, but that did not turn off DrivePool and the drive was still being reported as in use by DrivePool in my client computer. I used to have a computer without the DrivePool application on it, but that computer died. I am hoping there is an easy way to stop the DrivePool services/program on the client computer short of having to uninstall the DrivePool program. Any help appreciated. Thanks.

When I remove a drive from DrivePool, for example a 4TB HDD, it can be a lot longer than 18 hours. Add to that, a file duplication after the removal, and you would be looking at many, many hours for the task to complete. Having said that, I know DrivePool is not the fastest solution for file transfers, but it seems to get the job done in its own time. In my case, the process takes place in the background and I just let it run because I'm usually not in any great hurry. I almost always have DrivePool remove the drive and duplicate as needed in the removal process. I suspect, that DrivePool might offload all your files on your remove drive but you might still have some duplicate files on the drive when it is done. But, I have very few folders designated to duplicate. To check that your files set for duplication were redistributed properly on DrivePool, you can go to Settings>Troubleshooting>Recheck duplication and that should report results for you. Again, that process might take some time. I have 80TB+ on my DrivePool, almost all pool drives are slow USB archive drives, and I have learned to be patient. Fortunately, DrivePool seems to handle things better without my interference and I have seen some processes take a few days to complete.

I see. your SSD's are used as archive drives, just very fast archive drives. I have not used File Placement in my DrivePool, so I don't have any personal experience to offer. If adding your new 8TB drive to the systems cleans up the files being dumped on your SSD's, then I hope you update your results so we all can learn.

I am not support, just another user. However, I like your approach Method2 for Backup. If SSD1 fails, you could remove it from DrivePool and replace it with a new SSD. Then, you run a compare folders of your backup drive and DrivePool in any number of File Explorer programs (Free Commander is what I use), and select it to write any missing files/folders. To me, that is a simple approach, and it lets DrivePool write the files to your SSD's per your DrivePool settings. OK, I am a big fan of DrivePool, however, there are some shortcomings I have become aware of in using the program for the past ~2+ years. First of all, file duplication is not a smart duplication in that if your source files are damaged, then your duplicate copy will also have the damaged files. I have been looking for some kind of automatic checksum program that verifies all files are present and in good working order. The only thing I have found, so far, is using Multipar (freeware) and its .par2 files for verification and recovery, but that is a manual process. For my media files, like an album with multiple file tracks, or an audiobook with multiple file chapters, I typically set my Redundancy threshold at 10%. That allows me to verify all contents of the folder are present, and if some files are lost or damage, it can recover some files. Of course, a higher Redundancy threshold would recover more missing or damaged files. Using DrivePool, I have discovered that a media folder might be spread out over 2 or more drives. Without some means of verifying all files are present in the folder, you could end up being a song or two short of the full album. Ask me how I know! I had a HDD fail in DrivePool and I discovered lots of albums missing a few tracks. Would DrivePool file duplication save the day? Maybe, if none of the files were damaged and duplicated as damaged. But with Multipar, I can easily verify all files are still in the folder and/or recover some lost or damaged files. At 10% redundancy, I can verify my files and recover/repair most of my lost or missing files if needed. DrivePool file duplication at 100% redundancy cannot verify all files are in your folder and/or recover lost or damaged files in the same manner. If you have read thus far, let me say that DrivePool works great for me, but I have separate HDD backups of all my important files sitting in my closet. Additionally, I use Multipar with .par2 files to verify my data. If any or your DrivePool data gets damaged, you might never know and happily backup damaged files or incomplete folders. Multipar works great on media sized folders of less than a few GBs, but it would take forever to create .par2 files for my entire DrivePool. So, unfortunately, I have to create .par2 files on a per folder basis. If you know of anything that creates checksums and verification/recover options like Multipar, but on a large data set like a DrivePool virtual drive, please let me know.

EDIT: Deleted by user.

I have had to deal with a similar problem before. If you know which PoolPart is old and not being used, move all files from the old PoolPart into Drivepool using Explorer. Then delete the old PoolPart. Do this on both HDDs that have duplicate PoolParts. Then delete the old PoolParts. When you remeasure, you should have all your files in DrivePool and your "other" data should be back to nil (or close to it). It might be faster to just move all data from the old PoolPart to the new PoolPart on the same HDD, and then remeasure, but I felt more confident in letting DrivePool "fix" itself by moving the files from the old PoolParts into DrivePool. That way, DrivePool will put the files on the HDDs that make most sense for your settings (balancing, etc..).

I have found that DrivePool balancing and duplication often have problems when I hit that 90% threshold. I have seen my SSD cache get kicked offline as well. Fortunately, adding more HDD storage and/or removing unused files corrects the problems on my system. I have to manually recheck my SSD to tell DrivePool that it should be used as an SSD cache and not an archive disk. But it seems to work again without any problems. If you are happy with your current custom SSD cache settings, I would write them down because it seems to me that I had reenter my settings. After many months of not looking at DrivePool (it just works), I had forgotten my custom SSD cache settings and had to play around with it again until I got it back to where it works best for my system. If you use the default settings, then it might not be an issue.