ChipMonk

I'm afraid it all happened about six months ago, see "Upgrading WHS2011 to 2.x" Oct 24 2013 and I no longer have any data on it - just memories of the terror when I realised it was going wrong! The saviour that retrieved the situation was not Windows Server Backup, I've never been very impressed with that, but an Acronis True Image disc image which saved the day, and not for the first time in many years of messing with computers. I'm less than happy not being at the "bleeding edge" of Drivepool developments, especially when I see file placement options passing me by, but I like the integration into the dashboard which v1 gives and, most of all, it just works very well.

I much appreciate the kind offer but my WHS 2011 is running just fine right now and I want to keep things that way. I've had excellent, rock solid experience changing lots of things with v1 Drivepool and Stablebit Scanner on a WHS 2011 home built server, but everything went to hell in a handcart when I tried to upgrade to v2 Drivepool. The day was only saved with a backup OS image but some folder properties were compromised on the way. I'm simply not prepared to risk it again until, or unless, changed circumstances force me to. I guess that the file placement rules are in the "nice to have" category compared to the services which are the raison d'être of the unit. But thanks again.

OK thanks Alex - I'd missed that. But it would be really nice to have these features in a WHS 2011 friendly pack. I had a bad experience trying to upgrade Drivepool to v2 in WHS 2011 (outlined in earlier posts) and I'm unlikely to try that again.

Am I missing something? These new file placement rules outlined above are something I'd like to have so I updated plugin to "DrivePool.OrderedFilePlacementPlugin.Setup_1.0.4.5" but can't see any way of specifying a particular folder to a particular disc. Is this because I'm still using DrivePool v1 bcause that's best for WHS 2011 ?

I posted some of this story as a response to a request for guidance from JeffZ as to whether or not to upgrade v1 Drivepool to v2 on WHS 2011 was advisable or not. Drashna has suggested that I open a new thread to air all the issues I ran into: posted 24/10 My advice right now is DON'T DO IT! I reinstalled my four Drivepool v1 data disks on a WHS 2011 reinstall on a new server two months ago and it went really well and smoothly. I was really impressed and wrote to this forum saying so. I was assured that upgrading to Drivepool v2 would be just as easy - tonight I found otherwise. The installation seemed to go well - un-installed v1, rebooted installed and activated v2 and rebooted. All the folders were back in place on the server and all seemed well however: 1. No access to any shares from the network 2. WHS 2011 Dashboard Server Folders and Hard Drives showed nothing but "Refreshing list of items.." ad nauseum. 3. After giving system time for Drivepool to check and rebalance pool still no change in 2 so ran Drivepool Troubleshooter - Restore Drivepool shares - no change! 4. Ran Drivepool Troubleshooter - Reset NTFS permissions on pool. This ran very slowly for a long time then came up with error saying unable to complete. I'm really disappointed and stressed out about this. The server is working fine, the folders are all in place (apparently) but the network sharing is completely messed up - no users, folders or disk show in WHS 2011 Dashboard and I get errors if I try to find or insert any and I really don't know what to do next. I'd really appreciate some help ASAP. I'm afraid I don't understand the ins and out about where the information about file sharing is stored to answer the following: If I reinstate an image of the WHS 2011 OS with Drivepool v1 partition back will this return the system completely as it was or have I messed up data on the data disk shares in a way that I'll just compound the problems further. Why oh why don't I learn - if it ain't bust don't fix it!! posted 25 Oct (but appears to have gone missing): Well I decided that v2 Drivepool had no future on my system, especially when I found that trying to get remote access to Drivepool on my server messed up the firewall on my main client computer with ESET Smart Security! Things just kept getting worse and worse.. I uninstalled Drivepool v2 from client and server rebooted but found that Drivepool v1 would not reinstall on the server - kept getting a message about not being able to contact service but not clear if this "service" was supposed to be on my server or Covecube's - internet connection was fine. At this point, despite my reservations above about the file sharing mismatch I felt I had no option but to reinstate an earlier WHS 2011 OS partition image and try to get back to how things were before this disastrous upgrade. Rebooting after the image recovery gave me a working WHS Dashboard with Users, folders and Disks fully reinstated however sharing was still a mess. I ran "Drivepool Troubleshooter - Restore Drivepool shares" overnight and this time is completed - network shares became available again on the network. There is an ongoing discrepancy between the "shares" as described in the WHS Dashboard Users and Folders and the ServerFolders subfolder properties. I have reinstated the shares to their original status by manually inserting the required permissions in the ServerFolders subfolder properties - the Dashboard methods no longer works reliably but I can live with that so long as the result is what I want and is secure!!.The recovered OS image was a few weeks old, updating with MS Windows update went smoothly with no issues. Thought for the day 26 Oct One further, hopefully last, footnote to this saga to help make sense of it. The trigger to attempting to update to Drivepool v2 was that on 24 Oct, when I tried to open WHS 2011 Dashboard via Remote Desktop, I got error messages indicating that the Drivepool add-in was slowing down the launch of WHS Dashboard. I misguidedly thought that this was a hint that it was time to move to v2 and thus began my disastrous upgrade. What didn't register at the time was that this Dashboard error came after updating the server nVidia Graphics card drivers to 331.58 on 23 Oct. See above for the problems I got into and how I eventually sorted them. The day after I'd recovered the system using the OS partition image, in order to put my server completely back to its position just prior to the attempted upgrade, I proceeded to update the NIC and graphics card drivers and rebooted the server. And guess what? Using Remote Desktop to WHS 2011, on trying to open WHS Dashboard, I got a complete dashboard lock-up, and all network shares inaccessible from LAN. Oh boy, here we go again, and this time with my previously bombproof Drivepool v1! However, this time it was much more obvious that the nVidia drivers were implicated so I performed a clean reinstall of an older nVidia driver. Problem solved. So in conclusion. My system now appears to be working as before, albeit with server share management messier that I would like. I need to do more checks to see that shares are robust and I must get used to the idea that I need to manage them by directly interacting via ServerFolders/subfolder properties sharing permissions etc. rather than through WHS Dashboard. I would strongly recommend that if anyone has a satisfactorily working WHS 2011 Drivepool v1 system - LEAVE IT ALONE, Don't attempt this upgrade. If it ain't bust don't fix it - and, for me, that now includes being very cautious about hardware drivers. Sorry that I've gone on in such detail but if this story prevents a single person from having the problems and sleepless nights I've just gone through then it's been worth it. Chip

My advice right now is DON'T DO IT! I reinstalled my four Drivepool v1 data disks on a WHS 2011 reinstall on a new server two months ago and it went really well and smoothly. I was really impressed and wrote to this forum saying so. I was assured that upgrading to Drivepool v2 would be just as easy - tonight I found otherwise. The installation seemed to go well - un-installed v1, rebooted installed and activated v2 and rebooted. All the folders were back in place on the server and all seemed well however: 1. No access to any shares from the network 2. WHS 2011 Dashboard Server Folders and Hard Drives showed nothing but "Refreshing list of items.." ad nauseum. 3. After giving system time for Drivepool to check and rebalance pool still no change in 2 so ran Drivepool Troubleshooter - Restore Drivepool shares - no change! 4. Ran Drivepool Troubleshooter - Reset NTFS permissions on pool. This ran very slowly for a long time then came up with error saying unable to complete. I'm really disappointed and stressed out about this. The server is working fine, the folders are all in place (apparently) but the network sharing is completely messed up - no users, folders or disk show in WHS 2011 Dashboard and I get errors if I try to find or insert any and I really don't know what to do next. I'd really appreciate some help ASAP. I'm afraid I don't understand the ins and out about where the information about file sharing is stored to answer the following: If I reinstate an image of the WHS 2011 OS with Drivepool v1 partition back will this return the system completely as it was or have I messed up data on the data disk shares in a way that I'll just compound the problems further. Why oh why don't I learn - if it ain't bust don't fix it!! ChipMonk

Just a quick report back to say that the transfer went incredibly smoothly. OK the disk and pool letters got a bit scrambled but I stopped fretting about that ages ago since they're a complete irrelevance. Drivepool 1.xx has once again been a joy to work with, especially compared to the horrors of MS WHS v1 Drive Extender, which still gives me nightmares! Hope the move to v2 works as smoothly with WHS 2011 when the RC comes along. Delighted to see that Dashboard will now be supported. Many thanks Alex and Co.- a great job.

Thanks Doug - that seems clear and what I was hoping to hear. I couldn't remember at which point in my initial Drivepool install I selected (or had allocated) the Drivepool letter. So I can do this prior to attaching the data HDDs and with any letter available at that point. After that I assume that it's not important in what order the data disks are connected, identified and "lettered" by the new OS - the Troubleshoot tool will then find all the necessary information on the drives and allocate them to the new shared folders on the Drivepool drive. Here's hoping it really works that way. Many thanks - fingers crossed for the transfer over this weekend. I'm really impressed with Drivepool but this is the first time I've really tested it beyond day to day operations. Thanks for the help.

Drashna - sorry, but I'm still confused, your wording is ambiguous, at least to me!. You say "no need to change the drive letter of the pool". Now does this mean that I don't need to pay any attention at all to HDD drive letters in the new WHS enclosure and the tool will pull all the info from the drives, regardless of their order or drive letter, and create a new Drivepool with a newly allocated drive letter. Or does "no need to change the drive letter of the pool" mean I shouldn't try to change it, therefore I should make sure that, at very least, "F:" is free so that the new Pool can reallocate this slot for itself so doesn't change from F (as in the original poll) to something else.

Following unreliability of a SATA PCI-e expansion card on an D510MO Atom system, I am moving my installation over to a (hopefully) more robust system. My data is on 4 2TB drives with OS on a separate 500GB drive partition C and with D as the Feeder Partition. I am feeling reasonably confident about how to transfer over the licences and reinstate the pool, using the utility tool if required, but I'm not sure about the following and would welcome some input. Because of the idiosyncratic way the SATA card was detected on my Atom system and because when I first installed Drivepool I wasn't sure how to nominate a particular drive letter for the Pool, I ended up with the following (see attachment) with Disk order and letters out of order with Disk Names and with Pool as "F" When I move my disks over to the new OS install, before reinstating Drivepool do I need to tweak the drive letters and order so they exactly match the original configuration and leave F vacant or can I order them as follows and somehow get the Drivepool letter to P C: WHS (OS) D: Feeder E: Data_1 F: Data_2 G: Data_3 H: Data_4 P: Drivepool I DO NOT want to do anything which risks my data or is a major undertaking. I lived with "Drivepool F" perfectly happily when I stopped noticing it! But I'm particularly worried in case I get the data disks in a configuration that Drivepool can't immediately identify and is therfore unable to get all my data showing as the original pool. Thanking you in advance for any help you may pass my way. Thanks - Chip