[Kudos for DrivePool]

5 hours ago, miwa124 said:

Hi All!

 

I hope "general" is the right place to put this, but I wanted to thank the devs and spread kudos for a product that makes all my data hoarding, pack ratting, truly jbod hanging around dreams come true.  Drivepool "gets" what I want to do and make so much sense!

 

The concept is so beguilingly simple, its not trying to be fancy for fancy's sake, and just does the job in a nice, polished manner.

 

Thank you!

 

I love it as well but trying to get answers to my issue on the forums is taking a bit...

[Stablebit no disk activity]

Oddly enough, the drives are able to be written to and if I write to them, then there is write disk performance... very weird.

[Stablebit no disk activity]

I had a bad hard drive and the disk missing was there but I did not have time to figure out which drive and swap it out. Finally, I did, but there still is no disk activity and my pool says measuring but after 2h it still sitting in the same spot.

thoughts?

[Gui wont launch]

Are these forums being monitored by staff or are we supposed to go somewhere else?

 

[Gui wont launch]

stablebit is functioning but i cannot get the gui to launch. run it from the start menu and I get nothing, but it shows running in taskmanager

uninstalled, reinstalled and still no go. 

ideas? I do have a drive or 2 that scanner is saying has issues so that is what lead me to launch it.

[how to determine what drive failed]

All thrown into XLS and I was able to see that 4 of the drives that are not registering, are all together...

 

[how to determine what drive failed]

Ok so I installed Drive Scanner and running as trial for now, but I will have to buy it as I see its benefits. Shows 6 of my drives as hot, ranging from 109F to 141F...

What would of been nice:
If I could print out to a txt file or pdf all of the information. Instead I had to copy model number and serial (glad i could) and drop it into an XLS.

 

Now I went to update firmware in my drives, to which some are Crucial so I downloaded Storage Executive. VERY NICE TOOL!!!!
It showed me every drive, even non Crucial, and showed me the drive number, serial, firmware and status (good health, etc). I compared the items in there to Scanner and they are the same so I am confident that I am good to go with the information now.

 

[how to determine what drive failed]

10 hours ago, Umfriend said:

I read this is as asking how to identify the actual physical drives in the case. I physically label my drives and stack them in the server according to their labels. Without something like that, I have no clue how you would be able to identify the physical drives...

Yeah that is what im thinking... 

I will have to figure it out somehow though as I am missing files. I purposely didnt care too much if I lost stuff and it seems that in actuality I do. hah 

I believe the drives are ok, just my system cant see them anymore so not sure if powering down, reseating, etc will do it but you know once you open hardware, it tends to be unforgiving...

I think if I can find the actual drives, I can verify their connections and at least pull the drives and put them in another machine to pull the files off.

  

On 10/4/2020 at 6:11 AM, Shane said:

If you've got Stablebit Scanner installed, hovering the mouse cursor over each drive in the DrivePool GUI will tell you the model and serial of that drive. Does that help?

will give this a try

[how to determine what drive failed]

Tried reading through the various posts, but didnt see my answer so figured i may as well ask here to get my answer.

 

I have 35 drives in my system. It states 4 are missing. I have rebooted a few times, not coming back... 

 i removed them from the pool so I could at least get write access back to my pool.

 

my question, How can I find out the drives that are showing as missing. I am not sure if there is a loose connection or what but I need to start somewhere.

I ran a command line to get a list of disks and serial numbers, so to me that is a start but to unplug every drive and get that info is going to be a bit bothersome and i cant have my machine down that long.

my setup can be seen here
 

 

[My Rackmount Server]

1 hour ago, Umfriend said:

Yeah, WS2019 missing the Essentials role sucks. I'm running WSE2016 and I have no way forward so this will be what I am running until the end of days probably....

But wow, nice setup!

With the HBA card, can you get the HDDs to spin down? I tried with my Dell H310 (some 9210 variant IIRC) but no luck.

 

 

dunno if I can get them to spin down... I was going to go with an hpa expansion card that only used Molex for power so I could save a pci-e slot but they are all 6gb cards... or add ins...

this baby is 12gb!!!! so figured, why not.. actually.. I got it for $160 when others were $200... took a chance on one a guy was selling on ebay.. works like a champ!!!!

 

drive spin down.. I don't use that.. as I store all my plex movies/shows here too... 

 

[My Rackmount Server]

On 2/22/2019 at 3:46 PM, TeleFragger said:

 

ok so I am redoing everything and shuffling stuff around. what has stayed is ...

Network... this is a beauty.. 
ive got $75 into..

HP Procurve 6400CL - 6 port CX4 port 10gb switch
5x ConnectX-1 CX4 port 10gb NIC running force fw to 2.9.1000 
ConnectX-2 CX4 port 10gb NIC running Mellanox custom forced 2.10.xxxx fw!!!!! just got it and toying...I get that people say cx4 ports are old and dead but for $75 to be fully up for me is just the right price...

then the hardware/software...

 

Case: Antec 900 

OS: Server 2019 Standard (Essentials role is gone.. im sad)

CPU: Intel i5-6600k

MoBo: Gigabyte GA-Z170XP-SLI 

RAM: 4x8gb ddr4 

GFX: Onboard Intel HD 530

PSU: Corsair HX 620W 

OS Drive: 128GB SSD, Samsung

Storage Controllers: 2x HP H220 SAS controllers flashed to current fw

Hot Swap Cages: ICY DOCK 6 x 2.5" SATA /SAS HDD/SSD Hot Swap 

Storage Pool1: SSD

Storage Pool2: Sata with 500GB SSD Cache

 

pics are garbage and I haven't moved it into my utility room...

 

 

 

 

update to my setup...

Case: Antec 900     Corsair 750D with 6x3 bay cages

OS: Server 2019 Standard (Essentials role is gone.. im sad)

CPU: Intel i5-6600k

MoBo: Gigabyte GA-Z170XP-SLI 

RAM: 4x8gb ddr4 

GFX: Onboard Intel HD 530

PSU: Corsair HX 620W 

OS Drive: 128GB SSD, Samsung

Storage Controllers: 2x HP H220 SAS controllers flashed to current fw     Dell 5100 8i HBA / H220 36i HBA

Hot Swap Cages: ICY DOCK 6 x 2.5" SATA /SAS HDD/SSD Hot Swap x 3

Storage Pool1: SSD

Storage Pool2: Sata with 500GB SSD 256gb NVME Cache

So...

•  15x 2tb SATA
•  3x 4tb SATA
•  256gb NVME Cache
•  1x 120gb Samsung SSD - OS
•  21x 500gb ssd

all quiet, compact, 10gb network.....

Corsair 750d with 6x3 bay cages by Jeffrey Riggs, on Flickr

Icy Dock 3x - 6x2.5" hot swap by Jeffrey Riggs, on Flickr

SSD Pool by Jeffrey Riggs, on Flickr

SATA Pool - NVME Cache by Jeffrey Riggs, on Flickr

 

[moving drives around]

moved it all in the new case. worked great. Didn't realize that I didn't have enough pci-e slots for all of my hba cards in this one machine... so had to remove my 10gb nic and still now need power adapters to get 4 more drives in. So I will be on the hunt for 2x 16i hba cards at a later time..

 

but thought id as this as I didn't realize this...

can I assume StableBit does not require drive letters for drive pool to work?

windows ran out of letters so I did none and its working... so all good?

 

[moving drives around]

ive gotta checkout scanner...

[moving drives around]

so another curious thing... 

we just had a power failure and after i powered back on. one drive was unknown. made entire pool go grey. could access but not add...thats how i knew there was a problem.

 

so how do you know what drive is what? if im gonna organize this..how do i know what s/n drive is what? well actually device as it did say that i think. wouldnt give s/n. it said drive missing.

 

powered down and reseated hotswap drives..back up

[moving drives around]

1 hour ago, Christopher (Drashna) said:

Yeah, as long as the drives show up correctly, then it will maintain the pool. 

 

As for the power savings, that entirely depends on the power consumption, both at peak and idle.  
And to be honest, you probably won't see a lot of power savings.  The best way to get that savings is to use large capacity SSDs, which is what data centers do.  However, they can be a LOT more expensive. 

yeah ill use large ssd when my 1tb friends wanna go bigger 

[moving drives around]

6 hours ago, Umfriend said:

TL;DR but yes, DP will recognise the Pool. You could disconnect them all and plug them in on another machine and DP would see the Pool again.

One small caveat is that if you use plug-ins that are not installed on the new machine then you may have some unwanted behaviour. Other than that, it should work.

gonna move all drives.. mobo and os drive. os drive will be plugged back in correctly. 

 

cool so i should be good

[moving drives around]

I went throught all of the threads I could but just didn't see it. Maybe I missed it...

 

So my current setup is an

Antec 900 case
Icy Dock - 6x 2.5 hot swap
2x 8i hba cards (using onboard sata as well)
11x 500gb ssd - 7 in icy dock and 4 just floating around the case
3x 4tb 3.5"
3x 2tb 3.5"
2x 500gb 2.5"
1x 250gb 2.5"

ssd pool and sata pool

This case is jammed up... totally full... as I get drives, I add them... so it is totally unorganized. I just helped a mess of friends upgrade their kids (college, etc) laptops and desktops. amazing how 500gb ssd just don't hold much anymore!!!! had to go to 1tb for them and I got to keep their old 500s lol... and even those crappy sata 250 and 500....

 

anyway.. my question.. I'm getting a new case (bought it and waiting for it to ship from west coast to east coast)..

once it comes in, can I just shut down my machine, tear it all apart and just move everything in?

totally not paying attention to what drive is plugged into what card in what order?

so basically.. if I wanted... remove my drives, shuffle them around and put them all back in and it still work?

I have a freenas test machine... gonna ditch it... and move that hba and 11 ssds over too..

 

my goal is an ultimate 34 drive stablebit drive pool machine (it already is pretty ultimate but gonna be mega ultimate)...

case I just bought... is 
Corsair Obsidian Series 750D Airflow Edition Case
https://www.corsair.com/us/en/Categories/Products/Cases/Obsidian-Series™-750D-Airflow-Edition-Full-Tower-ATX-Case/p/CC-9011078-WW

what I'm liking about it is all the drive bays and expansions.. that can be done... 

so if I do this right I'm thinking...
3x icy dock - 6x2.5" bays in external 5.25 (18 drives)
4x 2.5 drives in cable management area (saw this how they utilized that space to sneak 4 more drives!!!!)
2x 3 drive bay adapters - can buy 2 more if I can find them or DIY bay adapters ( found a home depot diy for $3...!!!!! will see )

would put me at the ability to stuff...
18 + 4 + 12 = 34 drives... WOOOT!!!! since 25 of that are SSD.. LOW POWER AND HEAT!!!!!!

 

 

[10gb speeds using ssd cache?]

20 hours ago, jellis413 said:

I have it setup to move the data immediately from the SSD Cache.

My next plan is to get a NVMe drive and PCI-E adapter for the server and see if I can maintain the 10G speed.  My wife thinks I am crazy always taking apart machines and upgrading and experimenting with configs.  

Hmm i have an nvme adapter in my gaming rig and i should add one to my server... ill have to look into that too.

This post i put up was more of seeing if i can tweak things. Currently i am fine with low speeds to a few shares which is my sata pool and i keep my large iso files..software installs on my ssd pool.

I figure i can copy to a folder on the ssd pool then run robocopy to move them on a schedule.. then who cares how long... thats my next thing to set.

 

Technology is changing all the time. Was reading wd blue drives are cheap and way faster than ssd. Just saw a 1tb wd blue for $119... get a quad card with 4 in a pool... good to go for fast needs and only takes up a pcie slot...

[10gb speeds using ssd cache?]

19 hours ago, Umfriend said:

In a way I am lucky I only have a 1Gb network.

True but once you go 10gb... you will wonder what took you so long.. lol

I agree though.. i would copy files from my dslr and see eta.. then walk away. Now i copy and its done within a minute or two...

[10gb speeds using ssd cache?]

ok so I just gave a plethora of pieces a try.. freeware and paidware and only the one you mentioned worked with stablebit… 

• imDisk
• Miray RAM Drive
• StarWind Ram Disk
• OSFMount
• SoftPerfect RAM Disk - only one to work.

ok so it kinda stinks as my machine only has 32gb ram and I allocated 24gb. Copying to it, it started to work but it actually fell off way quicker than using my true SSD. Thought that was weird. I have another machine I almost built as my file server but chose to go freenas with that due to 64gb ecc ram but it has less drive bays. I needed many bays for my setup thus why I am running it on the i5 vs e5... oh well.. 

There is another that people like.. Primo RAM Disk... It too is seen by Stablebit; however, it requires a server version to run on my server 2019 and is $119... yeah but no thanks..

 

now if Stablebit added a ram disk to their setup.. that would be sweet!!!!! hint hint… hah

 

[10gb speeds using ssd cache?]

ahhh so I get it.. I was confused at first. thinking your doing that to go from RAM to the ssd.. but your essentially cutting the SSD out.... hmmm ok..

[10gb speeds using ssd cache?]

42 minutes ago, jellis413 said:

I just ran into this with a pair of Aquantia 10g nics that I purchased.  It seems to be a different amount that I could copy depending on the SSD that I used.  Their support confirmed that after the SSD write cache was filled, it would drop to below gigabit speeds.  I setup a RAM drive and passed it through as an SSD to the SSD Optimizer and speeds consistently stay where they should be and dont drop off like I was experiencing.  

https://www.softperfect.com/products/ramdisk/  is the product I used and had to make sure I selected the option for Hard Disk Emulation

 

thanks ill check it out.... 

I have the same problems with freenas..hah..

and they say they use ram (I have 64gb) and ssd for cache.. and it does a botch on the face...

 

ill give it a try and let you know. appreciate it

[10gb speeds using ssd cache?]

Ok so I put this under ssd optimizer thread but thought I would do my own. 
I have 2 pools.. 

ssd pool - can copy a 20gb file @ 1GB/s roughly...

sata pool - can copy but drops to 100mb/s roughly...
added a 500gb SSD and ssd optimizer plugin and still cant seem to get it going right. I thought you copy to the "share" and it will copy to SSD first then out... well im getting maybe 10gb copied before the drop off...

just uploaded video and its not done processing yet.. but will soon..

 

https://www.flickr.com/photos/144784186@N04/shares/L66tza

 

 

 

stablebit by Jeffrey Riggs, on Flickr

[My Rackmount Server]

On 2/4/2019 at 2:01 PM, TeleFragger said:

Wow yall got awesome setups!

I don't have a rack, nor do I want the sound of the rack servers.

what I have started using was a Lenovo ThinkStation Towers - dual xeon - 16 slots for memory!!!!! and now Lenovo P700 and P710's.

they are all quiet and can be pumped up on drives and ram and dual xeon's

ESXI 6.7 Machine 1 - 2x Xeon E5-2620 v4 @ 2.10GHz  - 64gb ram
ESXI 6.7 Machine 2 - 2x Xeon E5-2620 v0 @ 2.0GHZ - 128 GB Ram
ESXI 6.7 Machine 3 - 2x Xeon E5-2620 v4 @ 2.10GHz  - 64gb ram
FreeNAS 11.1 - 1x Xeon E5-2620 V3 - 24gb ram - 6x 2tb wd black (yeah I know reds not back but ive got them and they work.. hah)
Server 2016 / stablebit drive pool - HP Z420 - OS-128gb SSD / pool - 3x 2tb wd black + 2x 4tb wd black + 512gb ssd crucial for SSD Optimizer

Server 2016 is getting ready to gain 2 ( 6x2.5" hot swap bays) and filled with 12x 512gb crucial ssd running off 2x HP 220 SAS controllers

 

Network... this is a beauty.. ive got $75 into..

HP Procurve 6400CL - 6 port CX4 port 10gb switch
5x ConnectX-1 CX4 port 10gb NIC running HP FW 2.8
1x ConnectX-2 CX4 port 10gb NIC running Mellanox custom forced 2.10.xxxx fw!!!!! just got it and toying...

I get that people say cx4 ports are old and dead but for $75 to be fully up for me is just the right price...

 

ok so I am redoing everything and shuffling stuff around. what has stayed is ...

Network... this is a beauty.. 
ive got $75 into..

HP Procurve 6400CL - 6 port CX4 port 10gb switch
5x ConnectX-1 CX4 port 10gb NIC running force fw to 2.9.1000 
ConnectX-2 CX4 port 10gb NIC running Mellanox custom forced 2.10.xxxx fw!!!!! just got it and toying...I get that people say cx4 ports are old and dead but for $75 to be fully up for me is just the right price...

then the hardware/software...

 

Case: Antec 900 

OS: Server 2019 Standard (Essentials role is gone.. im sad)

CPU: Intel i5-6600k

MoBo: Gigabyte GA-Z170XP-SLI 

RAM: 4x8gb ddr4 

GFX: Onboard Intel HD 530

PSU: Corsair HX 620W 

OS Drive: 128GB SSD, Samsung

Storage Controllers: 2x HP H220 SAS controllers flashed to current fw

Hot Swap Cages: ICY DOCK 6 x 2.5" SATA /SAS HDD/SSD Hot Swap 

Storage Pool1: SSD

Storage Pool2: Sata with 500GB SSD Cache

 

pics are garbage and I haven't moved it into my utility room...

 

 

[2 pools - best setup method?]

ok so I now have a 10gb network and I can saturate the setup I have...

I had a pool with 3x 2tb and 2x 4tb - sata drives. All WD Blacks...

I added an ssd cache and installed the optimizer and I guess it works for copying files TO the pool. However I do a lot of retrievals and just ordered 2x 6-2.5 hot swap bays. first setup I bought didn't like and returning.. second one will be here in 4 days... so I have some time.

new pool will be 

12x 500gb crucial ssd - Pool 1 (6tb)

2x 4tb and 2x 2tb (for now) wd black and 500gb ssd optimizer - pool 2 (12tb)

my thinking is... I don't retrieve much but when I do, I want it fast... so keep software and iso here and a robocopy job to copy over to pool 2 so it can replicate.

does this sound overthought?

 

I have a server 2016 with essentials role that I am using right now with ssd optimizer and mess of wd black drives and has been great.

just setup a new box running server 2019 ( essentials role is gone and that sucks) / stablebit drive pool / 2x hp h220 sas controllers (to handle the 12x 2.5 drives) and room for growth.

thoughts?