Christopher (Drashna)

Honestly, not enough information. Missing stuff like the balancing ratio reported on the pool, etc. That said, setting the balancing ratio to 100% should make it balance very aggressively (when/where it needs to). But the default balancing settings shouldn't move the data around except for in specific edge cases. Such as the disks being over 90% full, there being "unsuable for duplication" space reported on the pool, etc. That said, could you open a ticket at https://stablebit.com/contact and after doing so, run the StableBit Troubleshooter, using the contact ID number from the ticket?

I mean, by default, it kind of tries to do this. New files are placed on the disk with the most available free space. If you have multiple disks with the same amount of free space, it should kind of round robin the placement (though this heavily depends on the file sizes).

Depending on the exact chain of events, this may be normal. When balancing or changing duplication, empty folders are not pruned. So if the files were on that disk but moved off, you will likely see empty folders. As for the recovery tools seeing the files, that may be normal. Files deleted from a disk, even when done by the balancing/duplication engine will still leave the data on the drive until those sections are needed. This is actually how recovery software is able to get that data. So if duplication was enabled, it soulds like you should be fine. However, you can recover the data, and remeasure the pool. It will check the duplication level against the number of copies, and adjust things accordingly (eg reduplicate data, remove extra copies, etc).

That is very odd, especially since it appears that the empty file is about the correct size, but filled with empty characters. If you continue to see this behavior, there may be other issues on the system.

Just a note, Microsoft removed all support for ReFS on removable drives. Also, I would recommend against using ReFS except for with a properly configured Storage Spaces array (as recovery only works in that setup).

To add to this, yes, the progress is saved. The "scanning" percentage is based on what needs to be scanned currently, not on the whole disk. Which can be misleading. That said, you can see how the drive is tracked here: https://stablebit.com/Support/Scanner/2.X/Manual?Section=Disk Scanning Panel#Sector Map And you may note that each sector has a date when it was last scanned. Each region is tracked, and different regions on the same disk can and will have different dates and times. Over time, this should actually help the software to "learn" when to scan the drives, by picking times when they are much less likely to be throttled.

There is also the "archive removal" option. And in a pinch, the "dpcmd" command line tool has a "ignore-poolpart" command that marks the disk as removed.

It should be noted that when adding a new disk, StableBit DrivePool does NOT rebalance the data in the pool to use the new disk, immediately. This is ... unnecessary and over time leads to a lot of unneeded/unnecessary writes/moves. Over time, it will use the drive, as new files are placed on the drives with the most available free space (and the new drive is likely to be the primary candidate for that). However, if you are insistent on rebalancing the data to the new drive, you can use the "disk space equalizer" balancer. It is disabled by default, but enabling will rebalance the data on the pool so that it's similar usage between all of the drives.

Also, things like the balancing ratio, and when to balance will influence how often it balances the data too.

You absolutely can use StableBit DrivePool in a VM. There shouldn't be any issues with doing so, if you're passing the whole disk through. The only caveat is that you may not get SMART support for the drives inside of the VM, but this depends on hypervisor and how things are configured.

Has also been flagged in a ticket, and we're looking into handling.

If it helps, iDrive E2 uses an S3 compatible endpoint, which should be the best option. I'm not sure about the pricing though (I haven't really looked close at it).

As I've been using linux more and more, the main/only thing keeping me on Windows is our software (and well, gaming, but even then ... valve has made that so much easier)... so I feel you. However, it's a complex issue. And that's not even counting distribution of the software... But at this time, no. Sorry.

For the mount points, at any time that the drives are connected to the new system. Personally, I would recommend changing the volume labels for the drives to match their locations/IDs, so that it's easier to identify the drives. Also, if you're using StableBit Cloud, it should sync the settings for the pool in StableBit DrivePool, and should sync the scan history and settings for StableBit Scanner, on the new system.

If this was the case, then it may be that the "SYSTEM" account permissions were changed or corrupted. This accound should have full control on the pool. This is the account that the service runs in, and uses for accessing the pool for balancing, duplication and drive removal. The "forced damage drive removal" option should skip problem files and continue with the removal, though.