CharredChar

Is it possible to command DP to set the pool in a "Read-Only" state so that no writes can happen through the pool itself? And to revert this change on command later? I believe it does this when there is no valid license or a drive is missing. But I am looking to schedule this for specific tasks that need the data to stay static while they run. After these tasks are complete the drive could be set back to a normal state.

That is correct, SnapRAID does not function properly if data is altered during a sync. Anything I have that might do so gets disabled (services, mostly) before a sync starts and enabled after it completes successfully. I actually came to these forums today to see if I could add an extra safe-guard by seeing if I could command DrivePool to lock the pool of any writes (without blocking reads or altering the permissions of all files) during the time SnapRAID is running. Scrubs also don't check over the entire drive by default, there are augments for scrub to change this. For example, I have mine check both the newest data along with older data every sync to where everything on the array gets checked in 30 days. This has actually caught damaged files for me multiple times in the past (I am not sure what caused them) so it has worked well for me. And you are correct, it won't "protect" against intentionally altering a file. But what I was mentioning before is that since SnapRAID runs on the underlying drive and not through DrivePool the FileID should not change just due to modifications of that file. But that is the important part I wanted to point out, not running SnapRAID directly on the pool managed by DrivePool. If something happens where the file is deleted then replaced with a file of the same name (using the OneDrive example) would this not actually change the FileID on the underlying file system since it is no longer actually the same file? This would come up in SnapRAID as "File Deleted" along with "File Added" even though it has the same name in the same location. This is what I was trying to confirm with my post. Since SnapRAID doesn't interact with DrivePool at all where the concern lies here would be how the file is handled on the actual drive when the FileID issue occurs in DrivePool. And in my specific case SnapRAID won't run for me if it sees too many "deleted" files as that is the first flag for a major issue. Though this would only trigger with enough files being deleted so if it happens to a handful over a long period of time it would not catch it. It would catch something like the OneDrive example though, assuming the above about the FileID is true. I also have it run the Touch command as well which should add an extra layer of defense, though not against applications that intentionally match the modify date of a file they are copying. This has been something that caught my eye as I am starting to get into VS (one reason I was looking at locking the pool during sync) so I want to avoid such issues. It has been my practice to usually use some other drive outside of the pool for active work (Multi-TB SSDs are cheap now adays) then periodically copy to the pool and mostly use the pool more like an archive. This kind of issue really just cements that practice for me since it is so difficult to know how programs will react to such a bug. I sure hope it gets resolved in the future.

I am curious about one thing... It was hinted at before with SnapRAID "not helping" but isn't that only assumed if you're using it to parity the pool itself? I've been using SnapRAID and DrivePool for a few years now. I don't use tools like Google Drive or OneDrive on my pool but I do have programs directly access the pool such as Autodesk Inventor and Blender. I haven't noticed this kind of issue myself but I wanted to make a note about SnapRAID. You should not be syncing from the pool created by DrivePool. And as such SnapRAID should give you some protection against this if you're using some of the tools available in SnapRAID. Assuming I am not misunderstanding the fundamental issue here. With how my system is set up I have all of my drives (both the data and the parity) mounted to folders on my C drive with no drive letter. SnapRAID is configured to access these directly only. DrivePool is creating a pool from these mount points and in turn can not even see the files SnapRAID creates on them. This means SnapRAID can repair the information DrivePool uses (the PoolPart folder) which also means a rebuilt volume would reappear in DrivePool like nothing happened. It also means that SnapRAID is running diff and scrub directly on the drive and not through DrivePool so it won't see FileIDs changing that way. Now I don't think it is completely safe, just that SnapRAID will see something has happened to the file and it should alert you to this. It's no different than if another program corrupted the file directly, it'll still sync that corruption blindly if you tell it so.

I see. I figured it was something along the lines of it being in RAID but I was confused why HD Sentinel would find it but others wouldn't. I might actually end up flashing my RAID Cards into IT mode which will allow them to act like HBAs and pass the drive over to the OS instead of requiring a RAID0 setup for each disk. The last couple disk failures have sure been a hassle because of the RAID aspect. this is just one more thing to push me towards doing it. Oh look, another project this weekend! Thank you. Nevermind, seems IT mode is not possible with this card! Thank you for all of the help.

I see. I ended up removing all the data from the PoolPart folders, removing all drives and recreating my pools as it seemed I have a few other issues lingering. Some times it is best to just start fresh... Since this is more than likely to come up again in the future (drive failures are inevitable...) I will remember a settings reset will fix it, assuming I don't have the future version by then. My settings are pretty simple so this actually takes less time than redoing the pools.

I have a Dell R710 with a PERC6/i and a LSI 9280-8e which have all of it's disks in single RAID0 arrays to use inside of Windows 10. The issue I have with this, which I've seen other tools have this issue too, is it does not pass a lot of information of the disk onto software, it just comes up as generic information. The only tool I have found so far that managed was Hard Disk Sentinel but the software is buggy and painfully slow. I would like to switch to using Scanner, as I am quite happy with DrivePool, to monitor my drives SMART data and email me when ever an issue comes up or maybe even daily with reports like HDD Sentinel does. I actually don't want it to do anything else such as attempting to repair data as the DrivePool duplicates one 1TB set of drives and SnapRAID backs up the rest, I'd rather run a fix or copy the file that way instead of hammering disks for repair. Not to mention I'd probably just warranty it if SMART comes back with errors. I have already went into the Advanced Settings to Direct I/O and checked Unsafe then restarted the service, still nothing

So this is the first time I've had a drive failure while using DrivePool. I'd like to first say I am quite happy with how the software handled the missing drive, locking the rest of the drives from writing when one went missing helped prevent any errors with SnapRAID. I am now coming across an issue though. As SnapRAID has recreated all of the files on the disk, including the PoolPart folder, everything sees the drive as the same one it replaced beyond its UUID being different which seems to have caused a conflict in DrivePool. More specifically is that the drive "reappeared" in the pool but it also sees the drive as being one it can add.

I was figuring as much, just based off when you re-measure or re-balance. I was just wondering if there would be a simple option I missed or some way to implement to just report half of current without needing to remeasure beyond what the drive is currently reporting. Thank you for the detailed information.

I am currently using DrivePool on two sets of disks, one of which are two 1TB drives that I have set up to duplicate each other as well as show up as a single pool. This is mostly used for more important documents, photos as well as the most accessed disks on the system such as the downloads folder. One "issue" I have been having with doing it this way is that the "Free Space" shown as available is the total of the two, which in most cases is what you'd want. The problem I have with that in my use case is it is really half as much. This is not so much of an issue if I Always (not the case) remember that it should be half when I go to allocate space for something but it also becomes a bother since I do have some automated tasks going to that disk and they will look at the total free space before executing. If there any way to work around this?