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saiyan

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Everything posted by saiyan

  1. I checked "C:\Program Files (x86)\StableBit\Scanner" directory but I don't see any "Scanner.Service.exe.config" file. You mentioned cards using "unsafe methods". Are you talking about add-on SATA or RAID controllers? My PC has a Areca ARC-1220 RAID controller but all hard drives connected to the card are in JBOD mode. I don't know if Scanner was configured to use any unsafe methods or not. I have previously changes settings trying to see if Scanner would read S.M.A.R.T. attributes from hard drives connected to the RAID controller so perhaps some settings were changed to use unsafe method. When I have the chance, I will uninstall VMWare Player and put Scanner back to see if any settings are using "unsafe methods".
  2. I don't remember if I have "unsafeDirectIO" setting enabled. I will install Scanner again this weekend or when I have the chance to verify its settings. Are you able to duplicate the problem by enabling "unsafeDirectIO" option on the PCs (physical, not virtual) you tested? Thanks.
  3. Okay.. If you need more information for research, please let me know. Thanks.
  4. Yes, I'm running Windows 7 64 bit host and installed VMWare Player 6 (and also tried Oracle VirtualBox too). As soon as I installed StableBit Scanner on the same Windows 7 64 bit host, the scanner service will freeze and slow down the host OS. (The Scanner is not installed in any virtual machine OS). The anti-virus software I installed is Avast free edition. The only disk backup software I have installed is Acronis True Image 2014 but it co-existed with Scanner just fine as long as I don't have VMWare Player or VirtualBox installed. I hope you are not going to ask me try to install or uninstall various software packages just to see what software Scanner works with. Each time Scanner service freezes, I can not even properly shutdown my Win 7 PC (the shutdown process would take forever). And each time I restore my C drive from backup image (40+ GB), I feel like I'm killing my SSD.
  5. Hi Drashna, I finally had the chance and installed Scanner 2.5.0.2954 BETA today. Unfortunately, the result is the same; system became slow or unresponsive on my Win 7 x64 system that has VMWare Player installed. To make my system usable I had to restore system drive from backup again. The fact that the problem occurred on my system with either VMWare Player or Oracle VirtualBox installed could mean there is some compatibility issues between StableBit Scanner popular Virtual Machines programs. I would prefer NOT to install any new version of Scanner (beta or not) just to find out whether the problem is fixed or not. Can any programmers at StableBit duplicate the problem by installing VMWare Player 6 on Window 7 64bit system? Thank you.
  6. Hi Drashna, I will probably do that the next time I have the chance (probably on a weekend). But I'm curious if you or anyone else can duplicate the problem by simply installing VMWare Player 6 on an existing Windows 7 x64 system that has the latest non-beta Scanner installed (StableBit.Scanner_2.4.0.2928_Release.exe). Thanks.
  7. My PC with StableBit Scanner installed does not seem to play nice with either VMWare Player 6 or Oracle VirtualBox. I'm not talking about running Scanner inside a virtual machine OS but have Scanner installed on a PC that also has VMWare Player 6 installed.. A few days ago I decided to install VMWare Player 6 on my Windows 7 x64 PC because I need to run Windows XP for testing purpose. After VMWare Player 6 is installed and I rebooted my PC. Upon log in to my desktop, I noticed several problems: 1) Windows Task Manager and Notepad both have classic looking border even though my Windows 7 has Aero effect enabled. All other programs still show the normal Aero borders. 2) I tried right-click context menu option to run CMD "As Administrator" but nothing happened. Afterward, the Start Menu does not respond to any left click either and the whole desktop feels somewhat sluggish. 3) When I launch Scanner dashboard, an error message indicating that it was unable to connect to the Scanner service. 4) I went into Computer Management and attempt to restart StableBit scanner service manually but its status stays at "Starting..." instead of "Started..." forever. 5) When I decided to "Restart" my Windows 7, it took forever to logoff and and shutdown so I had to press on the reset button on my PC. At this point I was thinking VMWare must have done something to WMWare Player 6 since I did not have such problem in VMWare Player 5 but I have never have Scanner and VMWare Player 5 installed on the same PC so I can not be certain. Luckily for me, I made a system image backup of my C drive before attempted to install VMWare Player 6. So I restored my system drive using Acronis True Image recue CD and restored my C drive to before VMWare Player was installed and this time I installed the latest version of VirtualBox to see if it has the same problem. Well, after Virtual Box is installed and my Windows 7 PC is rebooted, upon login to the desktop I experienced all the SAME PROBLEMS again. Once again, Scanner service seem to be the problem. To be certain that StableBit Scanner is causing the problem, I decided to restore my system drive again and this time I uninstalled both DrivePool and Scanner first. Then I proceed to install VMWare Player 6 on my PC which no longer have DrivePool and Scanner running. After the VMWare Player 6 is installed and my PC rebooted, I did NOT encounter any problem after I login to my desktop. So the next thing is to install StableBit Scanner and see if I will have those problems again. And immediately after the I installed Scanner (StableBit.Scanner_2.4.0.2928_Release.exe) but before I reboot my PC, Stable Scanner dashboard is launched automatically and all the problem I described is back!!! (One good news from all these testing I did is that StableBit DrivePool appeared to be okay and shows no compatibility issue with VMWare Player or VirtualBox installed.) Can anyone check if StableBit Scanner has any compatibility issues when VMWare Player 6? Thank you.
  8. Hi Alex, I am not going to worry about this WD green drive anymore because I have swapped it out for an old Hitachi drive a few days ago. FYI. This WD green hard drive I was using is a 2TB WD20EARS. It's the very first generation of WD green drives. I bought 6 of these a few years ago primarily because they were inexpensive and I needed new hard drives for various servers I was testing (web server, SQL sever, etc). Three of these WD green drives died within six months and their RMA replacements also died within a year.. The three remaining hard drives have experienced various system freeze under heavy I/O when I was doing some web server and SQL testing. Afterward, they all have some sort of re-allocation error related info recorded in their SMART attributes. These drives will still freeze or slow down when put in heavy I/O environment. They just suck. I have not purchased another WD hard drives since then and I have been using these three green hard drives as temporary backup unit for none-important data. When I rebuilt my media PC few months ago, I needed a old hard drive as a local storage unit for system image (drive C) backup but I didn't want to purchase another hard drive so I put one of these WD green drive in hoping that it will function well as a backup storage unit.. Although I picked the drive with the least amount of bad SMART attribute recorded, after installed StableBit scanner I realized this WD green drive is probably in worst shape then I thought false positive SMART warning or not. Anyway. Lesson i have learned is to never purchase another WD green drive again. They cannot handle heavy I/O..
  9. Alex, Thanks for contacting the vendor. It's not an urgent feature for me at this time since I can always view the controller's own proxy web page for SMART attributes. But it would be nice to see supports for Areca controller cards added. Thanks. Jason
  10. saiyan

    Surface scan and SSD

    Hi Drashna, Thanks for the clarification. The reason I asked about surface scan and sector write test is because I remember some 3rd tools I have used before (and perhaps including CHKDSK) would do sector write test when doing surface scan or at least testing to make sure free space sectors are okay. so I'm not going to worry about surface scan and ssd now. Thanks.
  11. saiyan

    Surface scan and SSD

    What happens if Scanner failed to identify a SSD correctly? Will surface scan do sector write tests? Thanks.
  12. Hi Drashna, I made sure the "Unsafe Direct I/O" option is checked and went through querying method on the list. Only the following two items have green check mark next to them. Everything else has red X marks. 1) General Section: SSD 2) WMI Section: S.M.A.R.T. Statatus. When I clicked on the "..." button for the SSD item with green check mark, I get the following information: Version: 40 Model: Seagate ST4000DM000-1F21 Serial number: W30045PN Bus type: RAID Command queuing: True Device type: 0x00 Raw device properties: 0 Removable media: False Vendor ID: Seagate Product ID: ST4000DM000-1F21 Product revision: R001 When I clieck on the "..." button for the WMI S.M.A.R.T Status, I get the following message: PredictFailure: False I am using the latest StorPort driver downloaded from Areca's web site. I checked the device properties windows in the Device Manger and I see the "Roll Back Driver" button is greyed out probably because no generic driver existed. In fact in every new Windows 7 or Server 2008 installation I have done, no Areca controller card I have ever used (including ARC-1220, ARC-1880i , ARC-1882i) have any generic driver available. Hard drives connected to any Areca card will not be seen by Windows unless the proper Areca driver is installed. Perhaps you guys can contact Areca Technology (areca.com.tw) for assistance. It's not a high priority item on my list yet but it would be nice to see Areca cards supported since I purchase a license for Scanner a few days ago.. Thanks.
  13. Hi Drashna, I have created a memory dump or Scanner.Service process and the file is about 280 MB or 102 MB zipped. Please let me know where I should submit this memory dump file for analysis. Thank you.
  14. saiyan

    Surface scan and SSD

    So StableBit Scanner can always identify a mass storage device as SSD regardless of the manufacturer?
  15. Hi Drashna, I checked the BIOS setting of my ARC-1220 card and it already has "HDD SMART Status Polling" enabled. Using Areca's own ArcHttpProxyServer, I can use a web browser to connect to the RAID card and view SMART attributes. Thanks.
  16. saiyan

    Surface scan and SSD

    Hi Alex, I just saw a screen capture of SMART attribute info of a SSD posted by another user (see http://community.covecube.com/index.php?/topic/223-smart-warning-email-received-but-hdd-ok/) and I noticed it has estimated SSD lifetime info displayed. I don't see such SMART attribute data displayed for my Crucial M500 960GB SSD w/ latest firmware version MU03. Is estimated SSD lifetime attributes vendor specific? If so, can you add SMART attribute support for Crucial M500 in the future? Does the lack of SSD liftime attribute displayed imply that StableBit Scanner may have failed to identify my Crucial M500 as an SSD? I hope Scanner did identify M500 as an SSD otherwise I would be concerned whether 960GB of sector write tests was done when I scanned the SSD yesterday. How does StableBit Scanner identify whether a mass storage device is a SSD? Is it based on whether TRIM supported by the device? Thanks.
  17. saiyan

    Surface scan and SSD

    Hi Alex.. Thanks for the information.
  18. Hi. I have already clicked on "Submit to BitFlock" once when on the SMART warning window. I checked "C:\ProgramData\StableBit Scanner\Service\ErrorReports" directory and there are no files there. As for a memory dump of Scanner service, should I do that when the SMART warning is triggered? Thanks.
  19. I tried the Direct I/O test program and none of the "specific methods" nor unsaved I/O worked for reading SMART attributes from hard drives connected to an old Areca ARC-1220 RAID controller. FYI. Hard drives I have connected to ARC-1220 are all in JBOD mode. Is it possible to add support for Areca RAID controller? Thanks.
  20. Does StableBit Scanner do sector write tests during surface scan of a SSD? if so, what is the implication for the SSD's usable life expectancy? Should I minimize or even not scan SSDs unless there are problems? Thanks.
  21. I have been running StableBit Scanner for a few days and I noticed one of my hard drive (a WD WD20EARS 2TB) would trigger SMART info warning periodically. When such warning is triggered, the SMART info dialog would show a red "X" mark for "Reallocated Sector Count" and a yellow "!" for "Reallocated Event Count". (Please see the attached image for example). However, if I open CrystalDiskInfo to view the SMART attribute info for the same hard drive, both "Reallocated Sector Count" and "Reallocated Event Count" have raw values of ZERO. After a few minutes the SMART warning in StableBit Scanner would go away and the SMART info dialog shows only "Read Error Rate" and "Reallocated Sector Count" with green check next to both items. CrystalDiskInfo has never shown any caution or warning status for my WD20EARS 2TB hard drive. All attributes related to "reallocated sector" all have raw value of zero so I'm confused why StableBit scanner would periodically show warnings related to "reallocated sector". Does anyone know if this is a false warning displayed by Stable Scanner? Thanks.
  22. Do long hours of calculations occur only when balancer settings are changed and there are a lot of data in the pool? Thanks
  23. Okay. My DrivePool has stopped "calculating" today. Not sure what happened but it would be nice if someone can explain why DrivePool would need to "calculate" something for 16+ hours while the PC is idling with no file transfer or any other read/write activity going on.
  24. My latest trial installation of DrivePool has been "calculating" for a long time. Here is how I got to my current situation: 1) Install DrivePool 2.0.0.387 2) Install "Ordered File Placement" plug in 3) Added five 4TB hard drives to a pool. Each hard drive was formatted as basic GPT NTFS volume with 16KB allocation unit. 4) Configure balancing plug ins so "Ordered File Placement" has the top priority but disable automatic balancing. 5) Copied about 2TB of media files to the pool. Afterward DrivePool dashboard showed all contents are stored on a single disk. 6) Install "Disk Space Equalizer" plug in and give it top priority (above ordered placement plug in) and then enable immediate automatic balancing. Afterward, the dash board shows DrivePool is in the process of re-balancing files to other hard drives. When the process was completed, all member hard drives have approximately the same amount of data stored. So far so good. There are no unusual messages such as "calculating" at this point. Power off The PC and go to bed. 7) The next day I powered on the PC and copied an additional 300GB of files to the pool. Afteward, the dash board shows those additional 300GB have been copied to a single disk but there is no indication that DrivePool is in the process of re-balancing since I sill have automatic immediately balancing enabled and "Disk Space Equalizer" plug in still has the top priority. Instead, the dash board shows "calculating" message at bottom. While DrivePool is "calculating", Windows task manager shows DrivePool is utilizing about 10 to 15% of processor resource. I have let the PC idle for over 7 hours hoping DrivePool would finish whatever it is calculating but it's still in the process of "calculating". Does anyone know what DrivePool may be doing or calculating" ? How can I make DrivePool finish up its calculation process ? Thanks.
  25. Yes. Clearing DrivePools settings worked. I just stopped the DrivePool service first, delete content of "C:\ProgramData\StableBit DrivePool" directory and restarted Drvive pool services. Afterward when I re-open DrivePool dash board, all my hard drives showed up under non-pool disks. Thanks.
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