saiyan

Drashna, I think using uniqueID to track hard drives may be partially responsible for this problem. I did few more tests and here is what I noticed. Test #1: 1) Install DrivePool and add hard drives to a pool normally. 2) Uninstall DrvevPool without removing hard drives from the pool. 3) Don't do anything to the hard drives. (e.g don't reformat or delete hidden pool directories). 4) Re-install DrivePool After re-installing DrivePool I see existing hard drives automatically show up in the same pool I created in the previous installation. And because existing hard drives are already part of a pool, they are not listed under the list of non-pool hard drives. This is good and I guess this is the result of tracking uniqueID of hard drives. Test #2: 1) Install DrivePool and add hard drives to a pool normally. 2) Uninstall DrvevPool without removing hard drives from the pool. 3) REFORMAT existing partitions on the hard drives (without deleting partition or clean hard drive). 4) Re-install DrivePool. After re-installing DrviePool, I do not see the pool I created previously. This makes sense because because I reformatted those hard drives. However, those hard drives also do not show up under the non-pool disk list. I guess this is where tracking uniqueID is causing the problem. Most likely DrivePool still think those hard drives still belong to a pool based on the uniqueIDs and therefore don't show them under the non-pool list. But because those hard drives have been reformatted (or the hidden pool directory are deleted), they don't show up on any pool either. Now that I think I know what is happening, I don't think this is a big problem. If I want to reformat a hard drive previously used in a pool, I will just need to remember to "clean" the disk, re-initialize and create new partitions or be sure to remove hard drives from a pool first.

Okay. This problem has occured again. Here are what I have done since last time I reported the problem. 1) I uninstalled DrivePool trial a few weeks ago in my Windows 7 virtual machine. 2) Today I downloaded and installed the latest DrivePool trial version (StableBit.DrivePool_2.0.0.345_x64_BETA.exe) 3) Upon launching DrivePool, I noticed none of those drives which I used successfully with the prior DrivePool installation shows up on the non-pool disk list. I did more testing and here is what I noticed. Tasks which were unsuccessful to make or re-create volume recognizable by DrivePool. 1) If I simply reformat (quick format) the volume on those drives using Disk Management, the disk is still NOT recognized by DrivePool. 2) If I delete the existing NTFS volume and create a new NTFS volume, the disk is still NOT recognized by DrivePool. (Unlike last time I reported the problem, deleting and then re-creating an NTFS volume did not make DrivePool recognize the disk). Tasks which were successful DrivePool will recognize the disk volume re-created. 1) If I use DISKPART command line tool to "CLEAN" a disk and the proceed to initialize the disk (choosing GPT) and create a new NTFS volume, Drive pool will show the disk volume in the non-pool list. 2) If I use DISKPART command line tool and use the UNIQUEID option to change the GUID of an existing disk and then re-create an NTFS volume and also using DISKPART RESCAN option, the disk volume immediately showed up on the non-pool disk list. (Note: I don't remember exactly the detail of what I did in this second step so some detail may have been left out). So eventually I was able to make all; disk volumes recognizable again to DrivePool again but these solutions all means loss of existing data because new NTFS volume need to be created. I'm wondering what is the criteria for a disk volume to show up on DrivePool's list? If I can see disk volumes listed Disk Management GUI or using DISKPART command, I would assume those disks should also show up on DrivePool's list. It seems to me there must be some kind of metadata (such as GUID) on the disk or volume which was used by the prior DrivePool installation and some how prevented the new installation of DrivePool from recognizing those same disk drives. I have not submitted any support ticket yet since I don't have any log files to show. (I don't see any logs or error reports in "C:\ProgramData\StableBit DrivePool\Service" folder showing anything strange). May be this problem only occurs in a VM environment? (I Win 7 VM is running using VMPlayer).

If SnapRAID is properly configured, it will read files from individual hard drives or partitions and not the pooled volume. So mvd is correct that if files are moved around between different hard drives by balancer plugins, SnapRAID will need to do extra work the next time you sync. In this case, SnapRAID would think some files were deleted from one drive and new files are added to another drive. That means when you run SnapRAID sync again, the program will need to read those files and calculate parity data even if those files have not be modified since the previously SnapRAID sync.

Thanks for the information. After some more testing, I think turning off all balancing plug-ins is the best strategy if I want to use SnapRaid.

I noticed he web page for the "Ordered File Placement" plug-in says the following: Is this the default balancing behavior when all balancing plug-ins are turned off (unchecked) ? Thanks.

Does anyone here use SnapRAID to create parity data stored on hard drives in DrviePool's pool? What kind of balancing strategy do you use? I imagine if I use a balancing strategy that move files around between different drives too often, I would need to run SnapRAID to sync parity data more often even if I don't update any data on those hard drives. Thanks.

The Error Reports instruction said I'm supposed to zip the content of "C:\ProgramData\StableBit DrivePool\Service\ErrorReports" and send it to the the support contact but that folder is empty on my test system. However, I do see some log files in "C:\ProgramData\StableBit DrivePool\Service\Logs\Service" directory so I attached the log file from the day this error occurred and submitted the issue to the support contact.

So I decided to do some more testing of DrivePool again in a Windows 7 VM and I noticed an issue. My Windows 7 VM has 5 virtual disks attached (in addition to the boot drive). Each drive is formatted as basic disk containing a single NTFS volume (partition). I installed the latest 2.0 beta and the first issue I noticed is that not all drives are recognized by DrivePool in the "non-pool" section. Only three out of five of my hard drives in Windows 7 VM are recognized so there are two drives which I cannot add to a pool. In my attempt trying to resolve the issue, I reformatted all the drives using Computer Admin tool, re-assigned drive letters and even rebooted my Windows 7 VM several times but DrivePool would only recognize three out of five drives. All five drives are accessible via Windows Explorer and CMD console so I don't know why DrivePool don't see all of them. Finally, I decided to DELETE partitions on those two drives not recognized by DrviePool and RE-CREATE new NTFS volumes. And THAT finally solved the issue. However, this solution is not feasible in a production environment. (I would need to backup data and re-create partitions). Does anyone know what would prevent DrivePool from seeing all formatted NTFS volumes? Does anyone ever have such issue in production environment running DrivePool? Thanks.

Thanks for the info.

I would like to know if there is any reason why we should not access or update files directly via the hidden pool directories? I'm currently testing a trial copy of DrivePool in a virtual machine running Windows 7 to see how well it works with with Snapraid and so far everything seems to be okay. I simulated a hard drive failure and removal by setting one of the virutal disk to raw format so when the virtual machine turns back on again, DrivePool would report one drive missing. Then I formatted the new virtual disk to NTFS files system and used Snapraid to rebuild files in the pool directory of the original virtual disk. However, when I added this new virtual disk back to the pool, DrivePool created a new and separate hidden pool directory so all files in the original pool directory on this virtual disk would be recognized as "other files". Thus I determined I need to move files from the old pool directory to the new one so the files would be accessible again in the main pool. So far I have not experienced any problem by moving files from the old pool directory re-built by Snapraid into the new pool directory. However, I would like some confirmation that such procedures would not cause any problems in DrivePool especially if I have balancing plug-in turned on. Any information would be appreciated. Thank you.