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Thank you!

Thanks. Sorry didnt seen your reply in my email box yday. Just found it now. I see what you mean. By the way I wasnt referring to corrupt sectors on the drives in drivepool itself. Drivepool is in my server which backs the client PCs and one of these PCs presumably had corruptions develop from bad sectors. The bad file was probably being copied into the server drives. I didnt know there were corrupt files till I tired restoring the drive and windows stated they couldnt be copied to the new drive because of corruption. I am glad I had multiple versions of backups and the older ones were fine. By the way, are there backup softwares that you like more. I tried veeam before but it wouldnt work with Drivepool's duplication setup.

Thanks @Spider99. I am glad you are still here on this board. Hope you are well. Its been a while since I posted. Ok, will plan on option 1. Now just to get some Red plus 8TB drives. If I remember correctly, you used to run a WS 2012r2 with DP and scanner. I probably should post this question in the scanner section, but since you probably have a similar setup, meant to ask you. Does scanner not pick up corrupt sectors, files from a failing drive copy? This weekend coincidentally one of my home PCs had a data drive start clicking. Before i got to clone and replace it, it was all gone. I thought no big deal, I have a nightly backup. Well apparently the bare metal restore is a little more complicated on WS 16 essentials than was on my old EX490 WHS and needs a bunch of steps (windows PE etc). So i went with recovering selective folders by using the restore function. Here i ran into issues with some folders and files in the backup apparently corrupt (per the restore software). I was able to pull a much older version from august and those were not corrupted. Luckily the recently modified folders in the more recent version of backup were not corrupted. The only ones i couldnt get out were ones that claimed I didnt have permission (probably encrypted). But I wondered if a client PC drive was developing corruptions, and these files were nightly being backed up into the server in hard drives where the Stablebit scanner was constantly running, why didnt scanner notify me? Or does scanner only find stuff when it runs its full scan? To this minute scanner isnt reporting any corruptions on either of the duplicate server hard drives. Have a great day.

Hi and hope everyone had a good weekend (and thanksgiving in the US). I have had stablebit drivepool and scanner for the past 3 plus years. It has worked great. I have a mirrored setup of two 4TB drives in my pool. This is housed in a windows server (essentials 2016) that backs my home client PCs nightly and also has server folders for the family. The server is also backed up into an external 8TB drive every day. I am planning on replacing the internal 2 4TB with 2 8TB drives as I am almost out of space. I do not however have an available spot inside the computer to add one or two more drives during the upgrade. So I was wondering what my best (fastest or safest if they differ) options for migration were? 1. Remove one of the two HDDs probably via the DP UI ( i presume i would need to force it to cancel duplication when that happens?) and which of the two should I start first with, given that I believe that one of them tends to have slightly less space maybe from the VSS. Then I pop the first new 8TB drive in its spot, add it via DP, and wait for the over 3TB data to be copied over. Then repeat with the second drive? Or would this be too many writes. A to B and then back to A 2. Switch of the PC, pull one drive out and clone it to the 8TB drive and then do the same for the other. When i put the two new 8TB cloned drives back will DP recognize that these are the same content as the previous pool except for the size? Or does it use serial numbers of the old drives and would that be an issue. 3. Connect one or both of the new 8TB drives to the PC via an external USB enclosure such as the one I have: Unitek 2 drive unitek enclosure Then ask DP to add them to the same pool and do its magic and move the files to the two new drives? This may take a while given in my experience the external enclosures are slow even if they claim to be USB 3.0. For options 1 and 2, I presume I should stop all actions in the server like client back up and server backup before I start I presume? Thank you for your time. Best AK

Hi, Love drivepool and using it for 18 plus months. Other than the periodic server missing folders message in windows essentials dashboard that goes away when i reboot the server, its been great. I have been running for some time with two 4tb drives with duplication for entire pool including client backups. OS is on a separate SSD. I want to add an 8tb drive to the server (have physical space for it). Can i add the drive to the above pool but deactivate duplication selectively for this drive (as it impossible to duplicate nearly 7plus TB of files when i just have 1.5TB free available on the current pool) or make a second pool for just the 8tb or leave it entirely out of the pool. The main purpose of this 8tb is movies and tv shows that i dont need to duplicate (they are from my discs and i have the original ). I run plex on my server and Id like to point it to this additional 8TB drive in addition to some of the files already in the pool. Trying to find the cleanest solution. thank you EDIT: I cant seem to reply to your answer @Christopher (Drashna) Am i missing the reply button or does this thread only accept one reply? Using firefox. In any case...thanks for the suggestion on the server folders missing. Saves me the reboot :-) On the adding drive part, I gather you mean I can add a drive to a duplicated pool but that after doing that, I should under balancer-drive usage limiter, uncheck the box for duplicated and leave the check box for unduplicated for this 8tb drive? Thanks

@drashna Thanks. Yes had to uninstall previous beta version and reinstall the version you sent. Now all sectors are green !! So it was just a bug with previous beta version Curiously this version is an exe file so runs a separate program rather than within the essentials dashboard (i am running windows server 16 essential). Not really an issue as I can constantly run both the dashboard with the drivepool and this file separately. BTW Does the exe file run as a service when the computer boots up or do I have to start it?

Hi @drashna Thanks. When i tried installing it, message that "The specified account already exists" comes. I went to task manager and stopped scanner and still same result. Must i uninstall the previous beta version 2.5.2.3103 first? Does that cause it lose the info on the other drives? thanks

Still in external enclosure.

I bought an 8TB WD easystore external HD which has (and yes pretty much everyone knows this) a red drive EFAX (WDC WD80EFAX-68LHPN0). I ran the short and extended tests on HD sentinel and everything was fine. Now when i left it attached to my server which has stablebit scanner, i received an email stating" One or more disks are damaged and have data on them that is unreadable: WD easystore 25FB USB Device - 344 KB unreadable (688 sectors) - The rest of the disk is still being scanned Model: WDC WD80EFAX-68LHPN0" When i look at the sectors it is the very first block part of it is which is unreadable (Red color block). I did a file scan and that was normal. EDIT: The rest of the drive on the surface scan checked out completely normal. Given that i didnt find something with HD sentinel, is this potentially a false alarm especially given its the first block? I vaguely remember having a similar issue nearly 9 months back on another external drive and it turned out a false alarm. There was something about using a beta rather than stable version of scanner. I am running currently 2.5.2.3103 beta. I forget what the return policy for BB is and if this is a real issue, id rather return it now than have to setup a warranty with HD. thank you

Thank you!!

Thank you!! I was away and for some reason did not realize you had responded. Thank you for explaining the basis for the issue. So to summarize, I can run dedupe on the disks managed by drivepool provided i use the beta version of the software. Interestingly I am on version 2.2.0.651 beta as you suggested and the 'bypass file system filters' option is already checked. Should I uncheck it before i try running dedupe even though this is the beta version? Lastly, just to be sure i understood you correctly, since i currently only have two drives in the pool (which are copies of each other), I should run dedupe on one of these two drives and drivepool will take care of the other drive? Can an option at some point be added in the software to only allow this dedupe filter but still bypass other filters so as not to slow down the processing (as you mentioned that typically bypassing filters speeds up processing). EDIT: Rereading your response, it sounds like that is exactly what the beta version already does, sorry. thank you again.

Thank you. So if i run dedup on one of the disks, drivepool should duplicate those reduced parts into the mirrored disk? Since currently i only have two drives (duplicated by drivepool) i guess i just need to run dedup on one of them, not both correct? Will do. Should i use a beta version to get best results? Thank you.

Hi, I was planning on trying dedupe (server 16 standard essentials experience). ddpeval showed 27% saving as of now. Should i run dedup on the underlying drives or the drivepool virtual drive? Any recommendations? Also for that matter, is it recommended to point the server shared folders (setup via the server essentials dashboard ) to the drivepool drive or again should I instead point it to one of the underlying physical drives. I currently have it pointing to the drivepool pool drive and its working fine expect for the one time when I got a message that the user defined folders were missing, that resolved itself (may be coincidental). thank you

I have been using windows server essentials client backups (server 12r2 and now 16) of my client pcs without a hitch. None of my clients have DP, rather i have DP on my server that houses these client backups. In fact the primary reason i stuck with microsoft after WHS v1 was for the bare metal client backups. On my server, i have tried using the built in server backup, veeam and crashplan. Basically since the DP pool drive does not do the VSS stuff, you have to run it on the native drives, which means if you are duplicating info, the server backup also gets twice the size!! Veeam despite claiming that it dedups was still making massive backups when i asked it run on the duplicated drives. Crashplan was so slow that i gave up on it. So what i did was run the server backup only on one of the two drives that makeup my DP pool and thus get backups but keep the size under control.

Another option: On the server, i right click on any drive and i have a choice called "Configure shadow copies..." . From there i can change the shadow size. On a different matter, I installed server 2016 and reinstalled drivepool and moved my drives (not physically as this is the same server box as where 2012 r2 essentials was) to the new server. I was able to redirect the essentials dashboard server folders to the drivepool drive. Setup backups and three computers are backing up fine. However after I added a standard user account to access the server, though it created a user folder with that name, from the client computer launchpad, i am unable to access the shared folders from the client computer. I get a "Windows cannot access \\xxxxserver\shared folders Check the spelling of the name.....Error code 0x80070035". When i looked up the network pathway in the server for the shared folder it is as follows: " xxxserver\users2\xxxname" (xxxname is the name i created for the user). The reason it is users2 is probably because the drive pool drives already had a user folder with subfolders from my previous server 2012 r2 installation i suppose. So my question is how do i force lauchpad to go to the users2\xxxname account when clicking on lauchpad? Or is this issue because i connected the client pc as a workgroup (using the skip domain function)? Thanks

Take a look here https://forums.servethehome.com/index.php?threads/lsi-raid-controller-and-hba-complete-listing-plus-oem-models.599/ It looks like it is listed in the same category as the Dell H310 which i flashed to LSI, so should be fine. I do not however have personal experience with the fujitsu. Also as @spider99 said, may be post in that forum as there a bunch of very experienced guys in servethehome. best

Hi @spider99 Thanks. Yes i too find 12 r2 stable. And there is not much of a benefit with 2016 except that being a newer software, i expect longer support. Ebay does have much better prices, i just worry about whether those are valid versions being sold as many of the sellers have only a small number of ratings. But if it works for you, may be il take a closer look. I asked the same question on homservershow a while back but did not hear from anyone. I am glad you have tried it and it has worked. I remember hearing about that with windows 8 but never got around to it. Is classic start a software add on for 2012 r2 too? That is more or less what i do with 12 and windows 8.1!! (i actually got somewhat used to right clicking on start and working from there...so much so i sometimes right click on windows 7 start and only get properties and explorer!)

Hi, Congrats on a new server :-) I was curious if you picked 2012 r2 over 2016 because it came prebuilt or if it is a better price or you just like it better! I am on the eval version of 2012 r2 essentials but am tempted to look at 2016 essentials as they are more or less priced the same (399 on newegg).

Thanks for the offer Il probably use the dell t20 till i run out of space and then consider moving the drives, cpu into another case and motherboard. The price of the server (no OS), from dell was just a little more than the cost of the CPU itself. But you are right, building with parts you pick is the best. Thats how i assembled my home PCs. It is just that nowadays the pre built prices are remarkably cheaper especially for NAS or server grade.

Yes, I might do the first...I had the ssd originally in the bottom since the sata connection is sata 3 while the top ones are sata 2. Il probably get a little longer sata data cable and then do that. Agreed...but thats just it... dell t20 in the us when on sale is an amazing price but all these OEMs come with some compromise, dont they

Hi spider99 So i added a back case fan 120 mm and the temps in the lower drives came down dramatically but the upper cage not so much. No way to put a fan by the upper drive cage as the front is a dvd player.

EDIT.. Ok, thanks, I presume then that HGST coolspin (4tb) and ultrastar dont? Or where should i look under in case they do. I see a lifetime maximum and current temperature listed so i am presuming it is logging some historical information. i just looked at hd sentinel and noticed that the free one also offers temp charting like below. May be something you could look into for future upgrades of scanner along with the temp reporting in the task bar (or whatever that bottom right of desktop screen is called) thanks

Hi drashna (and other forum members). Is there a way to view temperature charts on individual drives in scanner? I am trying to see if at certain times the temperature climbs (relative to server backups, client backups etc). Also trying to see what benefits i achieved by adding a second fan today. There was a temeperature chart function in HD sentinel (paid one i think) and was checking if there is a way here too. thanks

Thanks. Yes ease of access vs privacy. Personally the info i am putting up unecrypted is the kind that i am not too worried about copyright, agency access etc but rather that someday i dont find family pics being used for an amazon ad without my permission.

Ok, thought as much when i saw all those strange files. So is there a way if i am away from my server that has the clouddrive software, say at work, to download those chunks and then recreate the files i want without needing to reinstall clouddrive on that computer. Of course there is no way id know which files are in which chunks so could be difficult. Chilling to hear that. I dont remember reading the TOS that closely but worries me if they have an option to say use my family pics as advertisements or similar. I dont really care if they dedupe as my original copies are at home in multiple locations. If i an encrypt the files, then i lose the ability to access them remotely. After all that is one of the reasons i keep certain files on the cloud.