[Basic questions (multiBoot, reImage, ReparsePoints, etc)]

Good evening,

> UI information is stored in the AppData folder.

You mean when you "measure" the pool the stats are stored in AppData? Of Each User? That's strange, you'd think this went into ProgramData. You probably mean language selection or some such though? In any case, so long as it's only statistics, we're good...

> General program settings are stored in the C:\ProgramData folder, such as balancing settings.

That's fine.
 
> And yes, this includes information about the disks.
> But not specifically the pool state.

Good. Will DrivePool "discover" the existing pool when I first install it in another O/S?

> Dual booting is a tricking thing. However, the pool itself has no issues with that.
> In fact, the pool is designed to "react well" to moving to new hardware, and the same
> applies here. (as see above). But the Pool status, membership, duplication status
> and reparse points shouldn't have any issues with dual booting.

Good.

> The biggest issues is licensing...

I don't mind buying it twice, just wondering if it will let me activate twice inside 2 different O/S'es without having to use different licenses (I can go by without having the pool on the 32bit O/S, it's used for DOS only). Any plans on making a Linux version?

> If the tool is run on the Pool drive, it shouldn't affect the pool ID, but it *may* stripe
> the duplciation status of the folders. You can then manually set them back and that will
> fix the issue. (heck, actually, you can use the "DPCMD" utility to change the status,
> so you can script this).

That's why I asked; DrivePool must "protect" its streams, and only expose non-DP streams. If it doesn't do that yet, then this is a good ticket to open; private streams should be invisible when stuff is accessed through the pool virtual drive.

> However, if you let me know what tool you're using specifically,
> I can test this out specifically.

I use SysInternals' Streams, ie: STREAMS -s -d D:\
https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/streams.aspx

> and yes, Alternate Data Streams are pretty awesome, and a great
> way to store hidden files/settings!

Yup, NTFS's Resource Forks; not used much, except for that ridiculous ZONE information that browsers tag to downloaded files.

We forgot the reparse points (my fault, I had two #4s up there) ->
I saw you say that hardlinks are not supported when you answered a question about Codi or Plex or whatever media library tool. But the following post says they are; are they? http://community.covecube.com/index.php?/topic/279-stablebit-drivepool-reparse-points/

Thank you.
Best Regards,
 

[Basic questions (multiBoot, reImage, ReparsePoints, etc)]

Good day.

So I've read several pages of the forums, and I still have a few questions about DrivePool. These have probably been answered already but I suck at searching, and I can probably infer some of the answers, but anyway, here goes...

1. System Drive (re)Imaging:

Does DrivePool save any pool state information in AppData? What if I image my system drive, then use the system for a week, changing things in the pool, and then later, restore that image; will the pool, in its later state, survive? For me DrivePool must NOT save any pool state information outside of the pool. I understand it uses ADS to store things, so I guess we're ok, but I want to make sure, as I re-Image my system frequently (say from last week's image, not from a fresh install obviously, as I'd lose everything).

2. MultiBoot:

I plan to boot between W7 and W10 (and even W7/32 and W7/64); I'd like to have the DP pool running on all OS'es, is that possible? From what I've read DrivePool will "discover" the pool if one exists already, but just as with re-Imaging, pool state must not be saved on the system partition or this will not work; so will it be ok?

3. MultiBoot-Licenses:

Do I need a separate License for each O/S?
What if I name my computer the same in each?

4. Reparse Points (hey Drashna):

I saw you say that hardlinks are not supported. But the following post says they are:
http://community.covecube.com/index.php?/topic/279-stablebit-drivepool-reparse-points/

4. Alternate Data Streams:

As I understand it, you use ADS to store stuff around the pool (very clever). I frequently run a tool that deletes all ADS from all files (and folders) - e.g. to get rid of that stupid ZONE attribute. Can I still run this tool on the pool? i.e. will the pool preserve its own ADS and let me delete the other tags? Obviously I must NOT run this on the underlying drives, but via the pool are we good?

5. Modifying the pool offline:

Can I dump a file in a subfolder of the PoolPart folder while the pool is offline (or even while it's online, but via the real drives rather than via the pool) and all will be ok? Obviously duplication will not trigger and it will be detected later if I "measure" the pool, but I can do this, right? I may want to save partition images in a folder inside the pool while I am booted in WinPE; wanna make sure this is fine (no duplication) and that the files WILL show-up later throught the pool once I reboot...
 

Thank you.

Best Regards,

[SSD Optimizer Balancing Plugin]

Good day.

 

> Well, we hope that the pool is never down!

 

Hahaha, well I multi-boot and also boot in WinPE regularly, the pool *will* be down sometimes ;-)

 

> And as I said, the Ordered File Placement balancer does attempt to do this,

> but that's not it's main goal. I've mentioned this to Alex (as I don't remember

> and can't find a specific request for this), as specifically a balancer that keeps

> a specific folder on the same disk.

 

Careful, not "a specific folder" but *any* folder, e.g. all files (but not sub-folders) inside any folder are kept on the same disk. The best example of the usefulness of this came from that other guy who talked about this in another thread: 1 Folder per Music Album, perhaps with a sub-folder for the lyrics, and all the tracks inside the folder on the same disk, don't care which, and all the lyrics on the same disk, don't care which.

 

Thank you.

Best Regards,

[SSD Optimizer Balancing Plugin]

Good day.

 

> And as I said, if you disable realtime duplication, that should "fix" the issue,

> although with the mentioned caveats. Not ideal, but it works.

 

I noted it, thanks! I will probably not duplicate the entire pool anyway, only some folders, so it might be good enough for me to use a single SSD and allow real time duplication, especially if I add a parity disk with SnapRAID or something like that. How often does the SSD Optimizer empty the "Landing Zone" SSDs? Only when the "Fill Threshold" is reached?

 

> Alex (the developer) has a good post that goes over this feature, that

> may be worth taking a read: http://blog.covecube...vepool-beta-m4/

 

Good read! I learned that unlike DB, DP doesn't duplicate the entire folder structure on all disks :-) And that it will hash files when there is a mismatched time. And that it doesn't consider 1 part the "original" and 1 part the "copy" but that all parts are equal. And that +++ it handles other programs modifyng files that it is currently duplicating with no problems. This is all very good.

 

> I believe there is a feature request pending for this already (a balancer that will specifically

> keep the contents of folders together), and once StableBit CloudDrive is released, we (Alex)

> should at least get to it, whether or not it's implemented. 

 

I went to the DEV Wiki and started clicking on tickets, but they are all "private" or something, there is no description on most...

 

> Though, as I mentioned, the "File Placement Rules" will allow you to do this,

> albeit completely manually. (though, you can also do neat things like adding

> a "\Music\*\*.mp3" to force the mp3 files onto a specific disk, while leaving other

> files to go anywhere... or add another rule for different extensions).  But it

> sounds like it's not quite what you're looking for, though.

 

Not quite. The file placement rules are too much for me for now (but the fact that they exist places this product way up in the "Wow so cool" category). I'm not really interested in placing some files on a specific disk (but I might be one day who knows), just in simplifying management when the pool is down. There is no rush; placing files all over the place has some performance advantages anyway.

 

Thank you for the excellent feedback you provide.

Best Regards,

[SSD Optimizer Balancing Plugin]

Thanks for the quick response.

 

> Specifically, the reason for the multiple disk requirement is the Real Time Duplication feature.

> This feature specifically writes out all copies of the files, to the disks in the pool in parallel.

 

Ya, I figured as much while writing my message and thinking about it. But needing 2 SSDs in order to be able to use the Landing Zone is asking a lot; they're not cheap, and motherboard SATA connectors are at a premium too. So far, without having tried either, I prefer DrivePool over DriveBender simply because support is much better here, but DB does not need 2 SSDs for its Landing Zone...

 

> The reason this is a big feature is that when a program opens a file, it locks it.

> That means it can't be moved, copied or otherwise altered while the file is open.

> This includes data on the pool, and definitely affects the ability of our software

> to duplicate the data.

 

Yes, I was going to get there, and ask about locks and duplication at some point, in another thread. So you are saying that Real Time Duplication hooks low enough on the storage stack that you can duplicate even while the file is locked?

 

> And why does this matter? Well, for instance, if you have a database program,

> and you're storing the database on the pool, the files will ALWAYS be locked. So,

> StableBit DrivePool would not be able to duplicate the files. However, you absolutely

> can turn off Real Time Duplication (we don't recommend it), which means you'd

> only need the one disk. However, this means that the data is only duplicated at a

> specific time, and once per day. If the files are locked during that time, then the

> data doesn't get duplicated.

 

Hmmm, that might be ok with me; Thanks for mentionning it!

We can, I assume, specify how often the duplicating job runs and when?

 

> As for Ordered File Placement Balancer Plugin (it doesn't replace any other

> balancers, but it *is* included in the SSD Optimizer due to technical reasons),

> it changes the pool's default "new file placement" strategy, which is to place

> new files on the disk with the most available free space... This balancer will

> also tend to keep the contents of a specific folder on the same disk (but it's

> not guaranteed).

 

 

Yes of course, if you always fill one disk before the others, content will tend to be grouped by folder, but I was hoping that "Folder Balancing" (for lack of a better term) had been added to DP (it was mentionned in another old thread in this forum). Ideally I'd want to fill disks using the default settings (most empty disk first) but grouped by folder. To repeat the example the other guy used, I'd want all 10 tracks of a music CD on a single physical disk (which 10 files are all in one folder) just to make things simpler when accessing the disks when the pool is offline, while still filling-up disks most-empty-first...

 

Thank you.

Best Regards,

[SSD Optimizer Balancing Plugin]

Good day.

 

I am reading-up on DriveBender and DrivePool. Whichever solution I enventually pick, I will want the Landing Zone feature, so here I am. I have a question or two regarding the SSD Optimizer.

 

First, this:

 

If you are using duplicated files, then you should specify multiple SDD disks or else the system will fall back to an Archive disk for one or more of the file parts.

 

 

I don't fully understand this. The Landing Zone, to me, should not duplicate files "on the fly" - it's only a Landing Zone. Whatever files are copied to the zone should be duplicated later when they are moved off the zone and into the archive disks. Ok, so the statement above kinda says that files going to the Landing Zone are duplicated on the fly. Question: If a duplicated file (x2) is dumped into the zone, and I have only a single SSD, then one part will go to a disk and one part to the zone. So using a Landing Zone is useless then? The I/O will be slow anyway since one of the parts is going to a disk. Do I understand this correctly? If I am understanding correctly then this severely limits the usefulness of this plugin :-(

 

Then there is this for this pluging: Ordered File Placement ->

This is just for filling up volumes in a specific order? Replacing the other plugin of that name?

 

Finally, do you have per-folder balancing yet? Where files inside a folder are kept together on a single disk (sub-folders can be placed on another disk, what counts is that files inside a folder are grouped together). If you do have it, can it be used together with the SSD Optimizer?

 

Thank you.

Best Regards,