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I am assuming that you are talking about partitioning a drive with both a hidden PoolPart DrivePool directory and "other" existing data for your non-DrivePool use. I was thinking that you could use the DrivePool GUI to "Remove" that drive from the pool. DrivePool will empty the PoolPart of that drive into the other drives in DrivePool. That should take care of the "pool" part of that drive. Then, depending on how much other non-pool data is left on that drive, you could either transfer that data to DrivePool (or any backup) before you partition the drive, or, if you feel lucky, you could use a partitioning program that lets you partition a drive with existing data. Normally I would partition a new drive, or a drive freshly formatted, or one I have emptied rather than hoping the partition program will not lose any existing data on the drive. All the programs I have used in the past recommended to backup your data before you attempt partitioning a drive with existing data that you want to save. But it has been a couple years since I attempted to partition a drive with existing data on it and maybe the software is more reliable now. When you have your drive partitioned into the sections you want, you should have drive letters assigned to each partition. You would simply add the partition to DrivePool that you want just like any other drive. For example, you could partition a 3 TB drive into 2 partitions: 1 TB for non-DrivePool data, and 2 TB for DrivePool. You add the 2 TB partition to DrivePool and it will never touch the 1 TB partition on that drive you set aside for non-DrivePool data. That way you can still use the drive for both DrivePool and designate exactly how much space (partition) you want for your "out-of-the-pool folder."

@praveen johri I think the solution offered by @Jaga is perhaps the easiest and best method. I don't think DrivePool has the ability to limit drive usage on a per drive basis. The only DrivePool limit settings I am aware of are limits set for the entire pool. If you split a physical drive into 2 partitions, then you would have total control over how much disk space you want to set aside for your non-DrivePool use.

@ZammoHere is a little info I copied from the internet on file transfers: Benefits and Drawbacks Asynchronous transfers are generally faster than synchronous transfers. This is because they do not take up time prior to the transfer to coordinate their efforts. However, because of this, more errors tend to occur in asynchronous transfers as opposed to synchronous transfers. If many errors occur, it can negate the time saved by eliminating the initial step of setting transfer parameters, because the receiver will have to take measures to correct its errors. I use TeraCopy all the time and have not noticed the "Error writing file" problem you have reported. However, if I am copying or moving files to my backup disks, I do check the TeraCopy verify box to ensure that the file was written without errors. I was not aware that TeraCopy defaults to using asynchronous transfers. I suppose they want to be as fast as possible. But I don't find the TeraCopy file transfers to be any faster than using Windows File Manger on my system. Where I see the advantage in using TeraCopy is that it will skip over problem files in the queue and continue the task until finished, then report the errors, if any, at the end. You don't have to babysit TeraCopy all night on those large file transfers. Compare that to Windows File Manger which stops at any problem and will not continue until you acknowledge the error box. You have to babysit File Manger until the entire task is done. I also use .par2 files for verification and repair on many of my media folders. Especially for my backups. Using .par2 files has helped me in a number of situations where I have had disk failures and have lost confidence that the files remaining were still in good shape. I don't use pool duplication for most of my DrivePool home media server, so the .par2 files quickly tell me if my files are still intact. I have my program create .par2 files at 10% of folder size, which is usually enough to repair maybe 2 tracks on any album if the files were damaged or lost. That is less that 100% of folder size at 2X duplication and saves me storage space. I have not used .par2 files on blu-ray files, which can be very large, but I would think the verify process of .par2 files would be very handy. That way you would be able to know if you can trust the copies or not. Even better, the .par2 files might be able to repair the damage if there was a slight problem with the file transfer. There are a number of free .par2 programs on the internet. I use MultiPar for creating my .par2 files because it works inside the explorer window when you right-click for options. Like you, I want to know that I can trust my files.

@Skijackz How big is your DrivePool and how much data is it trying to duplicate? 3 days seems like a very long time for so little progress. Can you go into Task Manager and check to see if data is being written to a drive(s) and at what speed? From what I understand, the duplicating process is a background task. I know it takes hours and hours for my duplicating to complete after a drive removal, but certainly not 3 days. The last HDD swap I did with Duplicate Later resulted in about 1.5 TB of data needing to be duplicated and it completed the task overnight. It's a slow process, but thankfully you should still have full access to your DrivePool while it does its magic in the background.

It will not take long to get a feel for how much data you can add to your DrivePool. I, too, started out with a hardware RAID background, then moved to Windows Storage Spaces, and now I am using DrivePool. I guess all systems have their Pros and Cons to consider, but DrivePool has the advantage of folder level duplication whereas the other systems only had pool level duplication. After using DrivePool for a few months, I decided that I no longer had to duplicate my entire online pool because I do have a backup of all my media files sitting on HDDs in my closet. If I lost a drive with only 1X duplication folders, I could still recover from my backups. In the meantime, I can use more of my online pool for more media files. That works better for me. But it did take some time for me to become comfortable with running a pool with largely 1X duplication. I have started using a cataloging program which allows me to see the difference before and after a HDD failure on DrivePool. That way, if I totally lost a drive, I could run an update on the cataloging program and see which files were deleted from the DrivePool. Than I could decide which files I would want to recover from my closet backups.

I have found that 'Other' data can be a number of things. It can mean that there is additional data on the drive outside of the hidden PoolPart directory. One feature of DrivePool is that you can use an existing drive with files on it, add it to DrivePool, and then DrivePool will add the free space to the pool and list the pre existing files as 'Other' data. I have done this a few times when I wanted to add a drive to DrivePool and then move that pre existing data to the pool later. Recently I swapped out an old drive for a new drive. For whatever reason, all of sudden I had a 1.8 TB chunk of data listed as 'Other' data and I knew there were no pre existing files on any of the drives in my DrivePool. On the DrivePool GUI, I noticed that one of my drives was the source of all that 'Other' data, and I knew there were no pre existing files on the drive. Fortunately, I was able to correct this situation by going to Manage Pool>Re-Measure. It takes a while to re-measure my 70 TB pool, but afterwards the 'Other' data listing was correctly read and displayed as either Unduplicated or Duplicated data as expected. Those are two situations I have encountered with my DrivePool, but there may be other situations as well. In your screenshot, I see that DrivePool is Duplicating data. I thought you said that you had turned that off on your system. At any rate, I'd let the Duplicating task complete. It has been my experience that your 'Other' data situation will not be corrected by the Duplicating task. But if you run the Manage Pool>Re-Measure task after the Duplicating task is complete, it will probably clear up that situation. At least, that is exactly what happened to me the last few days after I swapped out a drive and got that same 'Other' data situation which I knew was incorrect.

That might be a nice option to have IF you only had 2X pool-level duplication enabled and locked yourself into that one option. Windows Storage Spaces does that, but you have to set up the entire Storage Spaces pool with your duplication level at the start, and you cannot change or make any exceptions to it. I prefer DrivePool's advantage that allows you to duplicate folders at either the pool-level or down to the individual folder level. And, you can change your duplication settings in DrivePool at any time. AFAIK, You just can't do that in any hardware RAID system or Windows Storage Spaces. Like many of us, you might find that you will probably have some folders that require maybe only 1X protection and other folders that need 3X protection. On my home media DrivePool server, for example, about 95% of my DrivePool files are movies that I have backed up offline, so I only need 1X online protection for those files. That allows me to store many more movies on DrivePool, and saves me money, which was my goal. I do have some working folders with 2X duplication, and some personal folders that I set to 3X. So the issue of showing me only the total free space in DrivePool works for me. Also, since you are new to DrivePool, I would suggest that you might be changing your mind to your duplication needs as you use DrivePool in the future. I know I started out thinking 2X is what I wanted, but soon discovered that if I have a legitimate backup offline, then I only needed 1X on DrivePool. I have a small number of working folders set to 2X, but those files are not yet backed up offline. As everyone states, online duplication is a drive failure recovery solution, it is not a backup strategy. Having the ability to set different duplication levels in DrivePool is a real advantage over other pooling systems. In short time, you will develop a feel for how much space you have left in DrivePool, even with different levels of protection.

@Waltski, the DrivePool SSD optimizer plugin is only a write cache, so it would have no effect at all on your streaming (reads) movies to your TV. I have not yet moved to 4K files, but my 1080p files stream at about 1 MB/s or less, so Read Stripping at 2X would not make any difference for me. I have all my media folders set to 1X. On my home media system, my bottleneck is first in the Amazon Fire TV stick with limited RAM cache and low powered CPU, then second is my home wifi which has its limits. DrivePool is not on the list of things I consider to be a bottleneck on my media system because DrivePool can transfer files over my wired network at 30 MB/s or higher. But wifi is much slower and if many devices are accessing the wifi at the same time, things just get less reliable for streaming. I start to see buffing problems on my Amazon Fire TV stick with 1080p files larger than 16 GB, but that is due to my Fire TV stick and wifi limits, not DrivePool. I have a media center computer hooked up in the far room, and it can stream much larger movie files via wired ethernet. But that computer also has much more power than my Amazon Fire TV stick. I am not familiar with AppleTV 4K. Is that a wired device or wifi device? When you stream movies to your AppleTV 4K, you can use the DrivePool GUI to monitor the speed of your outgoing files. In my case, with the 1080p files, after the initial burst to fill the cache on my Fire TV Stick, the transfer rate drops to less than 1 MB/s. Since I know my DrivePool can transfer files at 30 MB/s from computer to computer over the network, I am assuming my Fire TV Stick can only accept that 1 MB/s speed for incoming data. I have a friend that was big time into Plex, and he told me that some game machines allowed a person to download/pre buffer a movie on the game machine's HDD and then you just play the move back locally from that HDD. That was a great option for sharing files over a slow internet connection. They would queue up the transfers the night before and then watch all the movies locally the next day. Is something like that possible with the AppleTV 4K? At any rate, use the DrivePool GUI to see what the transfer rate to your AppleTV 4K device is pulling and then you will probably see that a 1X DrivePool is more than enough to keep up with it. If you can, please post what DrivePool GUI transfer speed you see on your streaming 4K movies. I would like to know as a comparison to the 1080p files I am currently streaming. Good luck.

I think what you are seeing is that if you transfer 80 GB from one source drive, PrimoCache is sending it to the RAM L1 buffer and immediately (no Defer-Write) out to your second target drive. If your source drive and your target drive have essentially the same speed on your system, then you would never get any real advantage to using PrimoCache because it cannot speed up your drives. Where I see an advantage to using PrimoCache is in a scenario where the source drive is internal to the system, and very fast, maybe even a system SSD, and you are transferring files to much slower archive HDDs maybe attached via USB. Then you would see the advantage to the PrimoCache buffer as it accepted data as fast as your source HDD can send it and then it buffers out that data to the slower speed of the external archive drive. In that case, you would see the buffer continue to fill up RAM Level 1 and maybe spill over to your SSD Level 2 cache. When I was trying out PrimoCache years ago, I only had 4 GB RAM and no SSD. If I transferred data from my faster internal HDD to a much slower archive HDD via USB 2.0, you can bet that the RAM buffer filled up very fast. But the speed difference between the internal source and USB 2.0 target drives was huge. The internal drive might have been 6X faster than the HDD attached via USB 2.0. In my case, any transfer larger than my PrimoCache RAM buffer would quickly fill up the RAM Level 1 cache and then immediately slow down to the write speed of the external USB 2.0 HDD. Which is why I stated that I only saved maybe less than a minute of real-life time using PrimoCache because my ~2 GB set aside PrimoCache RAM buffer quickly filled up and then had to wait for the slower archive drive to write. Again, I had no SSD to act as Level 2 cache. For me, at that time, paying for PrimoCache to save 1 minute of real life time on my system was not worth it. If your read/write specs on your source drive and target drives in DrivePool is the same speed, then you will not see any advantage to using PrimoCache as a go between buffer. Yes, you can set a defer-write mode, but that may not actually improve your real life transfer times if the source and target have the same speed on your system. Ditto with using the DrivePool SSD plugin as a front end write cache. If I transfer files over my home network, I get maybe 30 MB/s transfer speed. My server DrivePool archive USB 3.0 HDDs get up to 100 MB/s. So, obviously, I get no advantage in that case using a front end SSD. However, if I transfer files from my fast server drive(s) at up to 480 MB/s to my slower DrivePool archive USB 3.0 HDDs at 100 MB/s, then I see the SSD cache as a real advantage. In my case, I also set my DrivePool SSD cache to "Defer-write" until it hits 100 GB in the buffer. In that way, I can also use my SSD as a read/write cache for working files in other programs. That works good enough for me on my system so I did not buy PrimoCache. Remember, the SSD will save your "defer-write" data in case of a power loss, whereas RAM will lose all that data in a power outage. If you are only hitting your RAM Level 1 cache while using PrimoCache, then you probably don't need it either. Windows 10 does a pretty good job itself using RAM as a buffer for file transfers. Where I think PrimoCache might be of more value to you, is that you mentioned that you needed multiple pools and that requires either multiple SSDs or will need to partition you SSD into more volumes. As I said, creating patitons on the SSD might increase the chances of wearing out your SSD early as you would be using less SSD drive space for repeated read/writes. And obviously, the cost of PrimoCache is probably much less than buying multiple SSDs if you went that route. In any case, you get to try out PrimoCache for 30 days to see if it is worth it for you. Compare that performance against using DrivePool's SSD optimizer setup, or even no SSD at all. Please post your findings if/when you get a chance.

Yeah, that's a lot faster than what I am getting. I just offloaded about 2TB of really small files that I had in DrivePool. I might get a chance to re-measure the entire pool sometime this weekend to see if that made a difference. My USB 3.0 HDDs have a write speed of about 80-100 MB/s, so I am thinking that is my bottleneck. Fortunately, one can still use DrivePool in full read/write while the re-measure task is running, so although speed is always important, I could live with letting the task run overnight.

When I tried out PrimoCache years ago, I only had 4GB RAM and did not have a SSD in my system. You can get some really impressive transfer rates on reads/writes when using PrimoCache RAM buffer as compared to writing to a slower HDD. However, with only 4GB RAM, I quickly filled my RAM and everything slowed back down to the write speed of my 5200rpm drive at that time. So, essentially, I saved only maybe 30-45 seconds actual transfer time on large file transfers. The cost of the program was not worth it to me, at that time, to save less than 1 minute of real life time. My current system has 8GB RAM and a 224GB SSD, so using both RAM and SSD cache, I think PrimoCache would be a more viable option than years ago. Howerver, for me, the DrivePool SSD plugin does everything I needed it to do for my home media server at present. When I have a large transfer of files, it goes directly into the SSD cache and then later writes it out to the archive HDDs. Perfect for me. I am not too concerned about buffering reads. Additionally, I set my DrivePool SSD cache not to flush until it hits 100GB of stored data. That way, I am able to use that 100GB SSD cache for both reads and writes for temp working folders. Not as fast as using RAM, but still much faster than using slower HDDs. In your case, if you plan on having multiple DrivePools nested, PrimoCache may be a real option to consider since you can take advantage of both system RAM and SSD cache to set up buffers for your DrivePools. One thing I don't like about the idea of partitioning the SSD is that you might end up wearing out sectors of the SSD prematurely because you have limited the area (partition) where the data is to be stored. So that area on the SSD might end up getting worn out faster than if you had the entire SSD available and the SSD software does its magic in balancing out the sectors where it reads/writes the data so the drive can have a longer service life. If I have that right, then the $30 cost of PrimoCache might well be worth the cost just for the expected extended service life of your SSD, let alone the advantages you should get by using both your system RAM and the SSD as buffers. At least with PrimoCache they let you try it before you have to buy it. If you plan on bumping up your system RAM to 64GB, I would suggest doing that before you start the PrimoCache trial period. Of course, you can immediately try out the DrivePool SSD plugin and see if that works for you. That was all I needed for my home media server. It's good to have options to consider.

Another option to consider may be using a product like PrimoCache which can use both your system RAM as level 1 cache and you SSD as level 2 cache for all your computer reads/writes - so, not just limited to DrivePool. DrivePool will use the SSD cache for writes only, but does not use it for caching reads. PrimoCache is a try before you buy software, and I think they offer a 30 day trial period. It worked good for me, but I chose just to use the DrivePool SSD plugin which is all I needed for my DrivePool home media server. If you decided to go with something like PrimoCache, then you would not have to partition your SSD for multiple pools in DrivePool. In theory, you would have access to the entire SSD for every drive in your system and nothing wasted sitting in a partition that is not being used. Additionally, it is possible to overrun your DrivePool SSD cache if your data transfer is larger than your available space on the SSD. That has never happened to me, but evidently it is possible in DrivePool. With PrimoCache, on the other hand, it is more like a true buffer and you would not be able to overfill it. If you ever filled the PrimoCache buffer, the data would slow down/stop until more buffer space was available.

@denywinarto, When I have problems with my computer, the first option I try is a cold reboot. That alone sometimes clears up lots of problems with Windows. As to the possible failing HDD, do you have any Hard Disk monitoring software installed? Sometimes that can detect problems with a failing drive. I use Hard Disk Sentinel to monitor my HDDs, and so far have been happy with it. They offer both a free version for just monitoring drives and a paid version with extra features to run diagnostics and fix some problems with drives. I would also suggest a complete virus scan and maybe a malware scan on your system if the drive(s) checks out OK. Don't know exactly what you mean by DrivePool is also pending update. I had my DrivePool set for automatic "check for new versions" but it never worked for me. I also tried the "Force update check now" but that was unsuccessful. Finally, I just downloaded the file from the website and manually updated my DrivePool. The manual update went fine and I had no problems. If you find that your drive is failing, and you have data on it, I suggest trying to manually move data off the drive as best you can before running anything like Chkdsk on your drive to correct problems. I recently had a failing HDD and Hard Disk Sentinel warned me about it. So I attempted to remove it using the DrivePool GUI. It got maybe 3% removed and then errored out. There were some corrupt files on the HDD and it would error out when it hit one. The DrivePool GUI error message suggested I use Chkdsk to correct the corrupt/unreadable directory error it was getting. So I ran Chkdsk, with repair, and it wiped out my entire HDD and all directories. That was a mistake. The next time I had a failing drive with corrupt files, I got smarter and transferred almost all the files off the drive using TeraCopy to move the files. If Windows File Manager hits a corrupt file, it stops everything and waits for you to respond to the error box. TeraCopy, on the other hand, will see the corrupt file, but then will automatically jump over it to the next file(s) on the list and run until finished. At the end of the process, you get a report from TeraCopy of the failed files that were corrupt and it could not move. On my 4TB HDD, I had only a handful of files that were corrupted and everything was able to be saved, but those files were enough to shut down both DrivePool's remove task and Windows File Manger. TeraCopy was able to run all night without me babysitting the process and the next morning the drive had all good files moved off of it. From my experience, once you have determined your HDD is starting to fail, you are up against the clock on removing data as fast as you can. With one recent HDD, I got almost 3 days before it completely died. My most recent failing HDD lasted about 12 hours from my first warning until it completely died. And, of course, I have had HDD that just completely died without any warning. At least with DrivePool I have my more important folders set for 2X duplication and all my files are backed up on HDDs stored in my closet. Good luck on troubleshooting your system. Hope you update the thread when you find and fix the problem.

@Spider99, thanks for the reply. You are probably right in that the CPU has less affect on the transfer/read of files than the make up of the files on those drives (I had lots of small files), or the controller used (I use USB 3.0), and the HDD speed (I have a mix of 5600rpm and 7200rpm). I guess I was thinking that maybe a multi core processor would allow more reads at the same time, and then the re-measure task would take less time. I am in the process of removing directories full of small .mid and .kar files I have collected over the years. I am dumping them off to archive HDDs to be stored in the closet. After I get those files off of DrivePool, it will be interesting to see if there is a substantial improvement in time it takes to measure the pool. I can already see that it takes "forever" to move those small files one by one to a backup drive. So, once those small files are gone from DrivePool, maybe I'll run a retest on the Measure task to see if actually makes a significant improvement.

FYI, I currently have a 71.2 TB DrivePool with 18 HDDs and 1 SSD. I just replaced an older HDD with a newer HDD and DrivePool went into a complete Re-Measuring task of all drives. Just for info, I wrote down some stats to see how "fast" it would take for DrivePool to completely remeasure my pool, with nothing else running on the server. My pool is 71.2 TB, of which 66.8 TB was data and 3.07 TB was free at the start. I know that does not add up exactly, but it's close enough for this example. All my HDDs are connected via USB 3.0 and the 224 GB SSD is attached to the motherboard. After tracking the "measuring" stats for 3 hours 9 mins, I found DrivePool was able to measure 66.8 TB over 3 Hours 9 mins for ~21.2 TB per hour read on the re-measure task. As I said, I had no other operations going on my DrivePool server at that time of the re-measure task. But, I think you still have both full read/write access to the DrivePool files when a Measuring task is running. If not, maybe someone will correct me. The only time I have seen DrivePool go into "Read-only" mode is when there is "Disk Missing" from the pool and you get a notification. My setup: I have an older, ~8 years old, HP desktop computer with an AMD A4-5300B CPU running at 3.40 GHz and it has 8 GB DDR3 RAM. Nothing to brag about. But it works great with DrivePool. If you have a newer computer with a faster CPU, you might get better results than I did. If your HDDs are connected directly to the motherboard, then I suspect you would have much better results. If so, please post your results for comparison.

I am in the process of replacing some old HDDs with new HDDs in DrivePool. During the "Remove" drive process, DrivePool reported "Error Removing Drive" and indicated a potential virus or unwanted program. I looked into the Troubleshooting>Service Log and found the file that was tagged as a virus and manually deleted it. In the process of reading the Service Log, I noticed a few things about duplication that raised some questions for me. 1) The Service Log indicated that it found a number of incomplete duplicate files. So, how does DrivePool know which copy is complete and which is incomplete? Does it just default to the larger file as the complete file, or does DrivePool use some kind a hash code to verify files? 2) There were a number of events that DrivePool found 3 copies of a 2X duplicate file. This leads me to wonder how I ended up with 3 copies because the folder/files were only marked for 2X duplication. I don't want to be wasting storage space on 3X duplicates that are supposed to be 2X duplicates. Until now, I have just let DrivePool automatically manage the duplicate folders. However, is there some maintenance that I need to manually do to clean up the Duplication folders? Despite the Service Log error events, everything I see on DrivePool GUI appears to be working fine. As long as I am getting the good, complete, files I am OK. Just wondering if DrivePool is auto correcting incomplete files and auto thinning out 3X duplicated files that are marked for 2X duplication. If there are any settings that I should tweak, please let me know. Thanks.

@pmcfarland, I like the suggestion by @Shane. The more I use DrivePool, the more I like it. There are usually many ways to accomplish something you need with DrivePool and there is built in flexibility to accommodate just about any need. Although I have not yet worked with nested pools, I do take advantage of DrivePool duplication set down to the folder level. About 95% of my DrivePool is home media storage that I don't need duplication. So I have saved lots of money by only duplicating the 5% of data that I need to duplicate and not having to designate the entire pool for duplication. In my older hardware RAID system or Windows Storage Spaces, I had to designate the entire pool for duplication.

+1 Me too. I'm signing on to this thread to see what kind of responses you get so I can learn too. I was thinking you could have a special DrivePool 2X folder(s) for your files that you want to be sure had a local copy, and then deselect your Cloud drives for duplicate data. That way, you could write the original file to the cloud drive and the backup copy be on your local DrivePool drives. But maybe I'm missing something here because on my cloud service drives, I already have the option to keep a local copy on my HDD in case the internet is down or inaccessible. Nothing to do with DrivePool, but I usually access my cloud drive files from my local copy, update the file as necessary, and then the cloud drive service will update the local file to the cloud in the background. In my case, I only have free cloud service drives and only use the cloud for files that I want to share via the internet between computers at home or if I hit the road. So I have maybe 1 cloud drive file and about 4 local copies (one on each computer). If the internet should go down, I still have 4 local copies of those files on my desktop and laptop computers and everything should have be sync'd up in the background. That works fine for my free accounts which are 5GB or less, but would not probably work for large media storage needs.

What software program and device are you trying to stream your media files and play on the TV? I use Kodi/Plex and have an Amazon Fire TV stick. I can stream 1080p video files up to ~16GB without any problems on my home network server over wifi, but any file size larger than that I start to get buffering issues. This is not due to DrivePool, nor to my wifi, but rather the limits of my Amazon Fire TV Stick with its low powered CPU and limited cache memory on the device. You have to know where your weakest link is in your setup and start from there. Also, and this might not be a viable option for you, but you can convert your files to a format that requires less CPU processing on your device and provides better streaming. Kodi will play ISO files on my system, but Plex will not, for example. I will down convert my 2160p, UHD, HVEC, and X265 files to a standard 1080p or 720p mkv file which requires very little CPU processing on my Amazon Fire TV Stick, and therefore I get good streaming. But I don't have a 4K TV so I don't mind converting my files to a "lower" quality 1080p or 720p movie. I have been told that Plex lets you download/buffer a complete movie to some game devices that have hard drives, and then you play the movie back from the local device's hard drive. So you would queue up your files before you wanted to watch them, let them download off the internet (for however long it takes), and then play the movie when the file is ready on your device. Not exactly streaming in real time, but eliminates the buffering issue of large files over the internet. I have never used the Plex/Game machine setup, but I hear that it works great if you have the right game machines. I did buy a <$100 used computer for watching movies in a third room. I can copy files to that computer's local hard drive and then play them back locally from the computer's hard drive. That is another way to overcome the buffering issue from trying to stream files off an internet cloud server or slow home wifi. Even that old computer gives me more streaming and playback options than my Amazon Fire TV Stick. I have a couple different internet cloud drive (free) accounts, and none of them are very fast. I would not even attempt to stream a movie off of them. I suggest you try to download a large file off your cloud server and monitor your transfer speed. Is it steady, or all over the place with dropouts? When it comes to streaming over my home wifi, I notice that I get an initial burst of ~4 MB/s speed while my Amazon Fire TV Stick is filling its onboard memory cache, but then the transfer rate drops down <1 MB/s thereafter. That is good enough for me to watch a 1080p movie <16 GB without any buffering on my system. Point is, you might see a different transfer rate on download versus streaming depending on your playback device. Well, there are a few things to consider and maybe something there might be helpful to you. Best wishes.

I just got done watching a 720p movie and I don't think my stream ever got over 1 MB/s. When I said the 1080p stream was 4 MB/s tops, that is maybe a short burst at the start of the file which I assume is filling the Fire TV Stick's onboard memory cache and then, like you noticed, it drops below 1 MB/s. Since you see more or less the same streaming transfer rate that I do on my system, maybe you can see why I am always saying that I doubt if your problem with streaming is coming from DrivePool. If I copy files to/from a remote computer to/from my DrivePool computer on my home network, I can reach 80 MB/s transfer rate. So, clearly, it's not DrivePool that is slowing down my system. @Shane already suggested using the Windows Resource Monitor, which I access via the Task Manager. You should be able to view the data streaming from your Storage Spaces drive volume. I use Kodi as my main media interface. If your DrivePool computer is on your network, it probably already has network sharing set on it. If not, turn on network sharing for your DrivePool drive (J: on my computer). Then, in Kodi, you need to add the media folder by going to the browse network command. Is it complicated? Well, it's a bit more complicated than Plex to setup, but I just like the Kodi interface better than Plex so I was willing to put a little more effort into the project. I had to go online and search for Kodi tutorials on how to setup a network folder for Kodi, but following the directions, I got it to work without too much difficulty. Just another thought comes to mind... I think you once mentioned that you were using IP6 protocol for wifi. IIRC, I had all kinds of problems with IP6 and shut it off so I only use IP4. At the time, there were many people complaining about the IP6 protocol not working correctly. It might have been too new and the IP6 standards were not firmly set. Anyway, going back to IP4 worked for me and I have not changed it since (if it ain't broke, don't fix it). If you are using IP6, you might want to turn that off and see if the older, more stable, IP4 works better for you. It could be that your devices are trying to communicate via different versions of IP6 and they have a hard time talking, which would lead to dropouts. Anyway, just a thought.

Have you determined what speed your TV streaming device pulls movies from your Storage Spaces or DrivePool? For example, when I watch my DrivePool GUI, I can see that my Fire TV Stick is pulling about ~4 MB/s tops for streaming 1080p movies. I don't suffer any stuttering or caching on my system. If I try to stream movies >16GB, then I start to see problems and caching issues. But, at that point, I know I have reached the limits of my Fire TV Stick with limited memory storage and its low power processor. It is not a limit of how fast DrivePool can send data over my wifi. Well, there is how many bars are available to indicate how strong the connection is, but bars does not equal speed. On my old 56K router, I would also have 4 or 5 bars indicating a strong connection, but I was constantly fighting buffering issues while streaming. I upgraded to a 1 gigabit router, which is much faster, and that took care of my buffering problems. Well, good questions but beyond my level of tech expertise with that equipment. I get my internet service from a local telephone company, and they have a computer support team on staff to answer questions and help customers with their equipment. If you are leasing your equipment from ATT, then they might have a support team you could contact for assistance. At least you have something that is currently working for you, so it's not like you are in a panic. After years of running Storage Spaces on my system, and now with DrivePool for just less than 1 year, I don't yet understand why you are experiencing streaming issues with DrivePool. On my system, it made no difference at all in regards to streaming, which I have stated runs at about 4 MB/s tops and usually much less on my system.

I am in the process of replacing my oldest drives, which were about 6 years old. I recently had 3 HDDs fail, but they were actually newer ~3 year old drives, so go figure. Unfortunately, my HDDs do not seem to age well, and they go from no SMART warnings to completely dead within a day or so. I have tried many different brands of HDDs and they all seem to fail about the same. Amazon.com has had a special going on with renewed 4TB HDDs for $60.00 which have 5 year warranties. I bought a few of those because they were NAS drives and the 5 year warranty is better than the 2 year warranty I was getting on my new drives. So far, the drives have all checked out fine. They also report 0 hours on the renewed drives and no SMART warnings. Don't know if buying renewed drives will prove to be a good investment, but I am not getting 5 years out of my newest bunch of drives with only 2 year warranties. So, at least I am getting 5 years covered with the renewed drives.

Yeah, it sounds like your system is magnitudes better than my ~8 year old HP desktop with a low powered AMD chip and 8GB RAM. But, DrivePool has no problem streaming my movies. I just don't understand why it's not working for you on a much better system. That's too bad. I hope you get the tech help you need with DrivePool. Life should not be so complicated. As I said, I ran Storage Spaces for ~7 years and when it works, it is great. But when I had problems, Storage Spaces was a disaster and there was no help from the MS community. I have had similar HDD failures using DrivePool, but the difference is that I have been able to recover almost all my data on the failing DrivePool drives. In the meantime, DrivePool continued to work just fine with all the other drives in the pool, so I was never really down in that respect. I hope you continue to update this thread because I really believe that your problem is most likely somewhere other than DrivePool. It would be great to see if you are able to resolve this issue and let us know what is was causing the problems. Best wishes.

I don't understand how DrivePool read speed can test out 441MB/s and this is causing a problem. When I stream from DrivePool to my Amazon Fire TV stick, the streaming rate on the DrivePool GUI is at about 4MB/s and I don't get any stuttering or caching of the movies up to 1080p. What kind of speed do you need on your system for streaming without problems? I guess that makes sense. If you have 14GB of RAM cache set aside in PrimoCache, then you would see an initial burst of speed and then it would drop significantly after the 14GB RAM cache fills up. When I tried PrimoCache, years ago, I only had enough memory to set aside 4GB RAM. So, small files transferred to the buffer very fast, but large transfers over 4GB quickly slowed down to the write speed of the destination drive. For me, saving 20 seconds on a large file transfer was not worth the cost of the program. As to PrimoCache and streaming, maybe there is no benefit to using PrimoCache considering my above example where my Amazon Fire TV Stick is only needing about 4MB/s streaming speed. At that rate, you would never even fill your Level 1 RAM cache. Adding an SSD as Level 2 cache for streaming would not provide any additional benefit if your destination device is only requiring 4MB/s, like my TV Stick. I only have 1 SSD drive on the front end of my DrivePool, but, like you, I get faster writes with DrivePool+SSD then I used to see with Storage Spaces. You probably don't see any benefit to PrimoCache because after filling up your 14GB Level 1 RAM cache, you drop down to the speed of the SSDs. I guess if you routinely transfer less than 14GB of data, then PrimoCache would speed things up. Usually, when I transfer data, it's a lot more than 14GB so PrimoCache would not offer me much time saved. Which is why I have not purchased PrimoCache. I was thinking of the $29 version. But if the software does not provide you any additional benefit, then it's just not worth it. At least they let you try it before you buy it. When Storage Spaces works, it works great. After running Storage Space for ~7 years, I was spending more time in PowerShell trying to manually fix problems with my Storage Spaces then I was actually using it. So I made the move to DrivePool and my life is better. I don't understand why you are having issues with streaming from DrivePool. Back in the day, I was having issues streaming from Storage Spaces to my Fire TV Stick, but I upgraded my wifi router to 1 gig service and that took care of those issues. I don't have any problem streaming movies from DrivePool. I suspect your bottleneck is somewhere else in your chain. Again, my streaming device only pulls down about 4MB/s and DrivePool has no problem with that. Here is a simple test you could try. Dump some files into a DrivePool 2X folder, turn on Read Striping, and see if that somehow makes a difference in your streaming experience. Also, watch your DrivePool GUI Performance Read/Write graph to get an idea of how fast your streaming device is pulling data. Your DrivePool CrystalDiskMark read speed test was 480MB/s, and I cannot imagine any streaming device needing anything close to that speed.

You have not stated how much data you have in your DrivePool. I just use the default DrivePool Balancers, and over time, the drives will fill up with data more or less equally. If you just started moving data onto DrivePool, it may be that not all drives have been used yet. The DrivePool GUI gives a visual graph of the usage of your drives. If there is not much difference, I would not be concerned. If you see one drive half full and another empty, then you might need to check which Balancers you have turned on and your Balancing settings in the DrivePool GUI. I have my settings to automatically balance the drives as needed.