Sonicmojo

Well - I am not about to remove a drive to test this version but it's nice to know something new is available. Also glad I am not the only one experiencing this issue. S

This makes complete sense - but how come the actual "Remove drive" process never completed? Is it not supposed to go to 100% (while leaving the dupe files on the drive) and conclude in a correct fashion? In my case - DP simply stopped doing anything at 94% and sat there for hours and hours and hours. This feels very uncomfortable on many levels - yet I had no choice but to kill the process. Luckily - there was no residual damage to my hard stop as all that was left on the drive where dupes. But this experience does not make me feel very trustworthy toward this app if a process cannot wrap up gracefully and correctly - especially when user data is being manipulated. S

Well - the drive is gone now so enabling logging will not help. And as far as unduplicated data - I used the same process for 4 consecutive drive removals. The first three went like clockwork...the "remove" drive process (whatever that entails) went to 100% and then DP did a consistency check and duplication AFTER the drive was removed completely. This last drive "removal" not go to 100% - it simply sat at 94% for like 18 hours. For me there is long and then there is REALLY long. So I eventually got fed up - cancelled the removal and pulled the drive. My concern is that this "remove" process did not go to 100%. There was zero file activity on the pools for hours and hours - so if DP was doing something - it should have been communicated. Oddly - the only files left on this drive (after I killed it at 94% for 18 hours) - oddly - were just the duplicates. So I do not understand what the right conclusion to this process should be. I am assuming that if I choose to "process duplicates later" the removal process should be successful and go to 100%. Yes? No? In this case it seems like it was set up to sit at 94% forever. Something was not right with this removal - the seemingly non-existent communication of the software (telling me exactly nothing for 18 straight hours) - should be looked at. S

Update. After I returned home from work - the drive targeted for removal STILL said 94.1% so I killed the process and restarted the machine. Once it came back up - I assigned this drive it's own drive letter and examined the files in the Poolpart folder - seems all the files in there were the files I had set to duplicate. So while that makes a bit of sense (I did tell DP to duplicate later) - I still do not understand why the removal stalled out and would not complete. I could have left this drive in this state for days with no change. Seems like a bug or something here. After the drive was forcefully removed - DP went ahead and did a consistency check and then started a duplication run that took another couple of hours. Looks like everything is good now. All my drives have been replaced so I will not need to do this exercise again for a while but I would still like to know why this drive was not removed cleanly. S

A Over the past few months I have been slowly upgrading the drives in my Pool. It's a 16TB pool with 4x4TB drives. Last night around 7:00pm - I added the last new drive to the pool and targeted the last drive I wanted to replace. I checked Duplicate later and close all open files and let the process begin - as per usual - things moved along nicely and around 9:30 - I closed my RDP session to the server and let DP do it's thing. When I checked back in this morning - I see the following on screen (see attached): 1. I see a ton of open files 2. The gauge has been at 94.0% like for hours 3. There is no file activity that I can see. The only thing that DP is telling me is that - if I hover my cursor over the "Removing drive ...(94.0%) indicator near the bottom of the screen (where the progress bar is pulsating) I see a tooltip that say "removing pool part" What the heck is going on and why is this taking hours upon hours? When I replaced my third drive a few days ago - the removal process completed cleanly, the drive I wanted to remove was 100% empty in about 5 hours and the UI was silent. The drive I am removing here shows 949GB of "other" on it and this is causing me concern. This drive should have nothing on it if the removal process is working correctly. Would love to know what is going on here and if I should just let it go, stop it or what? I do hear drive activity and drive LED's are flashing - but what is it doing? S Additional: Here are the last 20 lines of the Service log - anything here that looks suspect? 0:00:33.1: Information: 0 : [FsControl] Set overall pool mode: PoolModeNormal (lastKey=CoveFsPool, pool=c2cea73a-6516-4ed7-906e-864291ed7d8f) 0:03:22.7: Information: 0 : [Disks] Got MountPoint_Change (volume ID: dd88cf22-51f8-4ba9-a676-d0bb8b20430b)... 0:03:23.7: Information: 0 : [Disks] Updating disks / volumes... 0:03:30.1: Information: 0 : [Disks] Got MountPoint_Change (volume ID: dd88cf22-51f8-4ba9-a676-d0bb8b20430b)... 0:03:31.1: Information: 0 : [Disks] Updating disks / volumes... 0:03:43.1: Information: 0 : [Disks] Updating disks / volumes... 0:04:20.6: Information: 0 : [Disks] Got Pack_Arrive (pack ID: 0db29038-5dbc-4cdd-a784-5748d8b2f063)... 0:04:22.2: Information: 0 : [Disks] Updating disks / volumes... 0:04:50.5: Information: 0 : [Disks] Got Volume_Arrive (volume ID: f28ef3b5-4c91-44cb-9f35-7c76d4f97ef5, plex ID: 00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000, %: 0)... 0:04:51.6: Information: 0 : [Disks] Updating disks / volumes... 0:04:57.0: Information: 0 : [Disks] Got MountPoint_Change (volume ID: f28ef3b5-4c91-44cb-9f35-7c76d4f97ef5)... 0:04:58.0: Information: 0 : [Disks] Updating disks / volumes... 0:05:16.8: Information: 0 : [PoolPartUpdates] Found new pool part C6C614F2-7102-411D-B9C9-4D2F05B68ABB (isCloudDrive=False, isOtherPool=False) 0:05:27.3: Information: 0 : [FsControl] Set overall pool mode: PoolModeOverrideAllowCreateDirectories (lastKey=DrivePoolService.Pool.Tasks.RemoveDriveFromPool, pool=c2cea73a-6516-4ed7-906e-864291ed7d8f) 0:05:27.3: Information: 0 : [FsControl] Set overall pool mode: PoolModeNoReportIncomplete, PoolModeOverrideAllowCreateDirectories (lastKey=DrivePoolService.Pool.Tasks.RemoveDriveFromPool, pool=c2cea73a-6516-4ed7-906e-864291ed7d8f) 0:05:27.3: Information: 0 : [FsControl] Set overall pool mode: PoolModeNoReportIncomplete, PoolModeOverrideAllowCreateDirectories, PoolModeNoMeasure (lastKey=DrivePoolService.Pool.Tasks.RemoveDriveFromPool, pool=c2cea73a-6516-4ed7-906e-864291ed7d8f) 0:05:27.3: Information: 0 : [FsControl] Set overall pool mode: PoolModeNoReportIncomplete, PoolModeOverrideAllowCreateDirectories, PoolModeNoMeasure, PoolModeNoReparse (lastKey=DrivePoolService.Pool.Tasks.RemoveDriveFromPool, pool=c2cea73a-6516-4ed7-906e-864291ed7d8f)

All, After a instant drive failure on a secondary server last week - I am now being proactive with my primary server and replacing old disk in biweekly stages. This server has 4x4TB lineup and I have identified disk 3 as being the first one to be removed. The new disk arrived yesterday but - I do not have all folders in this pool duplicated. What are the correct steps to get this drive out of the pool, out of the box and then swap in it's replacement without jeopardizing any files that could be on drive 3 as single files? Assuming the Remove function in the UI should empty the drive (?) but I want to be sure before I start making any moves. And I assume Balancing would be my next step after the new drive is in place? Appreciate any tips from the field. Cheers Sonic.

Update - I was able to get the new drives in place and DP did exactly as described - it moved everything over to the new drives without a hitch. I pulled all the old drives and will move forward with the two new 2TB. Duplicates are now turned on for everything. Taking no chances. However - we really need the ability to at least create a text file or something of the files on each drive. I never really gave it much thought until this situation happened - but a guy is truly flailing in the dark here without any ability to see what's on each drive. I know I lost some files and have replaced most everything that I believe was there - but it would be nice to have some basic ability to create a file list. Would also like to shout out that Scanner did not recognize or alert me to anything regarding my drive failure either. While I was not expecting a 24 hour countdown to the death of a drive - I was hoping Scanner would at least tell me that a drive that was there a minute ago - is now not there. I believe I have everything set that I can for alerts? What am I missing or does Scanner not offer this most basic of alerts? Sonic.

Update: I pulled the faulty drive and I believe it is completely screwed. I messed with everything I could think last night including opening the drive case - the heads are in the "park" position and while the drive will power up and the platters spin - the heads simply rock back and forth to the disc edge exactly 11 times (beeping each time) and then the drive powers down. I do not think there is anything else I can do outside of sending it to the pros - but given what is on this server - that is not really cost effective. Next question - given the locked pool state - is there anyway to get a file listing of what is on this missing drive - before I start adding new discs etc? It would be ideal to know what I am chasing here before I get too far into it. The pool on this server was primarily just housing WSUS, WDS and a few other minor things that I should be able to repopulate without too much trouble. Cheers! Sonic.

I awoke today to a weird beeping sound coming from one of my servers. Also heard a disk thrashing away in the case so I immediately remoted into the box and checked Drivepool. Sure enough - a disk is reported missing. Disk Management confirms some is up as well. This server has 3x2TB using Drivepool. I have identified the disk with the problem and judging by the sound the disk it's making - it's not long for this world so I have to move fast. I have new disk on hand but want to make sure I deal with the data in the most efficient manner and hopefully get it back. First thing I did was power down the server. My plan is to remove the troubled drive and plug it into my workstation and see if I can at least work with it and hopefully copy data off it. Assuming I can get the data off - what are the steps to get this data back into the pool AND reduce the pool to just 2x2TB? If I can do that successfully - I want to move all data off the two remaining drives, delete the pool, ditch these old drives and start a new pool with the new 2x2TB disc. But I want to proceed carefully and not compromise any data if possible. I know that Drivepool has locked the pool as soon as it see the disc missing What are my next steps to handle this properly and hopefully be up and running with new disc? Sonic.

My upgrade worked perfectly - with the disclaimer that "upgrade" in this case meant a complete clean install of Server 2016 to a new system drive. I did however have a critical need to maintain my existing data drives. Both Drivepool and Scanner installed flawlessly - and especially for Drivepool - it picked up the pool (once I reattached my existing drives) like nothing had happened - saving me days of time backing up and restoring up to 10TB of data. Regarding Essentials 2016 - I would assume you should be good as well. Sonic.

For the past few days I have been dealing with some frustrating SMBv1 issues with one of my key apps (Desktop Central) which is a critical part of the existing server (and the new one). I had to get some very odd issues straightened around first as I am planning on moving this DS install from this old box to the new one (which is really the same box). Now that I have solved the issue - I can get back to the hardware fun. But as noted - I am treading very slowly here to ensure I do not compromise my existing pool or render this box "unstartable" but switching the SATA modes etc. I need to bench this box first, remove the existing pool drives and then pop in a spare to get this SAS controller going. That will most likely happen on Saturday. I will report back with either success or failure! Sonic.

Thanks for this - I am certain I would have been right back here asking about this! Cheers Sonic.

I read that post - but since I cannot see the actual controller before trying the update (CTRL-C does nothing) I cannot get the last 9 digits of the SAS address. I may have to open the box and see if there is a sticker somewhere with the address. Sonic

Jaga, Much appreciated! Sounds like it should be relatively painless. And thanks for the "configuration" tip - I knew I forgot something. I tried to take a look at the SAS controller about an hour ago - and now I have a different problem. I cannot even get into the SAS ROM/utility since it does not display when I boot the box. I found out I need to switch the SATA config in the BIOS to "RAID" instead of ACPI - which now makes me super nervous that I will not be able to get back into the server with the drives connected via normal SATA. Is it even possible to somehow switch into "RAID" mode just long enough to examine/flash the firmware and then switch back to ACPI so I can complete a few tasks on the existing server before I ditch it? Thoughts? Sonic.

All, This week I am finally considering activating the LSI 2308 SAS controller that I have on both of my file servers and wanted to understand how to get this working with Drivepool (and scanner). Ever since I have owned my two Supermicro X10SL7-F server boards - I have only used the standard SATA ports for drive usage. Seems to have worked just fine but I would like to move to the SAS controller on these boards for (hopefully) more stability and (hopefully) even a performance boost if possible. My understanding is that this controller should ideally be in "IT Mode" in order for it to allow the connected disks to act like JBOD - so I plan to flash the firmware on it later today. Assuming that works fine - I would then install the latest LSI driver during my server install and then move to reconnecting my three drives for Drivepool. Can anyone walk me through the basics of getting Drivepool to play nice with the LSI? My big concern lies with my existing pool. In a perfect world - I want to simply disconnect the drives - get the LSI up and running - reconnect the drives to the LSI, install Drivepool on the server and have it "see" the old pool and have it work as if nothing had changed. As opposed to backing up all the data to another server, building a whole new pool, transferring the data back in etc and wait who know how long for the pool to be back to normal. Appreciate any info from the field on how to do this right. Cheers Sonic