spork

I think the problem is already resolved in your beta, I got my laptop with esata and hooked it up then download beta version of scanner and it worked fine along with USB as well for reading smart status. I suspect my other system is in need of a clean install to clear out some bugs in the USB unless it's an issue specific to a USB3 controller (they are Fresco Logic brand), I will be doing a clean install of Windows 10 on that PC when it comes out so if the problem ever rears it's head again I will report back. Thanks for the help.

USB3 no eSATA link available. Smart was read over USB with Crystalmarks diskinfo tool. I think I have a laptop around somewhere with an eSATA port, if thats nessecary for analyzing it.

Still tinkering around with drivepool but with another machine aside from my main PC. Anyhow I have been testing some drives in a new enclosure but the scanner cannot read the smart status of the drives. I downloaded some other smart test tool and it picks up the drives fine. It's this model here, the Hornettek Enterprice 4X, any chance of getting this working somehow ? It's a jmicron chipset for sure as the disks are listed a jmicron hdd's, it may be a newer version of the chips they use.

Great thanks for the info.

The drivepool guys to be fair warned this could happen and the system is really meant for SATA, started getting a delete file error and ran a duplication check on the pool but the check seemed to stall after a long while going nowhere. Shut PC down after reboot four of the five drives are in a USB3 enclosure drivepool says they are all missing, disk manager shows them as raw. Storage spaces is a big pain in the ass in terms of speed and flexability but it never had this problem. It's not the end of the world as I have a good chunk of the data backed up. The drives are all brand new, it could be some combo of the HDD/enclosure or some other odditiy, I actually have two pools in operation and the second pool is working fine no problems at all though.

One of my external USB3 pools turned raw on me, I do have partial backups but is there any chance of saving the pool ? Edit: I do have one non-raw disk in the pool connected via SATA if that helps. If nothing can be done I will be going back to MS storage spaces as I cant afford random wipe outs like this, though your drive scanner tool is quite nice does it work alright with storage spaces ? I'd still like to use it as my early warning indicator if possible.

Great thanks, I'm actually swapping out the drive with another of the same make (Hitachi) from 2008 I still have lying around, bunch of SATA 2 year old Seagates wiped me out money wise replacing those as 3 of the 4 developed faults, I'm never buying those again. Two were okay and I replaced them with WD greens but scanner actually gave me the heads up on one the Seagates dying during a surface scan. The 08 Hitachi got a clean bill of health from scanner.

I've been running Drivepool and so far so good though the spare rarely used HDD [D:Storage] I have in my PC is starting to fail (not bad seeing as I've had it since 2007). This drive has a Drivepool folder with all my USB HDD's mounted as folders within it mounted as two seperate pools. Whats the best way to swap out the D: drive safely and not mess with Drivepool ? Could I just disconnect the USB drives, remove old D: then replace it with a new D: & would I have to re-mount each USB drive as folder (they are all labelled properly so thats not an issue).

Yeah and practically every eSATA enclosure uses them so if your not doing a tower PC with lots of SATA drives you have very few options. I want to ditch the tower PC so USB is my only real path, if drive pool is no more "risky" then storage spaces over USB I might give it a go then. One last thing does your drive scanner tool have USB spindown prevention, I used a similar app (HD Sentinal) which could stop USB drives going idle, some commercial USB drives (e.g. Seagate) have very aggressive idle times down to seconds.

Thats good to know thanks, the USB drives wont be going anywere, they will be connected 24/7 with UPS backup but if there is a chance even some random disconnect will do some serious damage I think I might have to stick with storage spaces. For me it was the awful & buggy jmicron controller found in almost all eSATA enclosures which I wasted a lot of money on trying differents enclosures and controller cards in PC to make it behave. I have not gotten eSATA to work reliably so I'm quite wary of spending any more money on those solutions, I may have to stick with storage spaces for the time being as I have a second mirror storage spaces volume working via USB3 and it has been quite reliable for me. Thanks for the help.

Quick query, I'm looking to move away from storage spaces parity volume, got 4 HDD's in it, they are currently hooked up via SATA but I want to eventually move them to a suitable USB3 enclosure because I want to get rid of the SATA controllers and HDD bays taking up space in PC (plus I've had way too many bad run in's with eSATA enclsoures) so USB3 it's got to be. I'm also picky about noise so I may need to try a few before I find the right one for me. Any way, if I create the drive pool based on the HDD's currently hooked up via SATA if I remove them and put them in USB3 will the pool just auto adapt like storage spaces does or does this require re-doing the pool from scratch ? Thanks.