Christopher (Drashna)

In the SMART settings, there is an option to "Do not query if the disk has spun down". Make sure that's checked. And also, double check the power management settings to verify when it spins down drives. The "Turn off hard drives after" setting. If this is larger than the SMART throttling option, then it could keep the drive active. Eg, you'd want the power management setting to be something like 20 minutes, but the SMART throttling to be 30 minutes.

Nope. And given ... everything, if you can get that drive replaced under warranty, it's absolutely worth doing! And yeah, some of these drives will last forever!

In the balancing settings, check the balancers. There are two options to handle this. The first is the "Drive Usage Limiter" balancer. Uncheck the "Unduplicated" data option for that drive. Alternatively, you can also set the StableBit Scanner balancer there to "Move un-duplicated data out of drives with SMART warnings. The option for damaged drives should be enabled by default. But if you want the drives with SMART warnings to be evacuated, that's how. You can leave the "move duplicated files out of drives with smart warnings" unchecked, and it will keep duplicated data on the drives. The StableBit Scanner balancer is the better option, IMO, as that this should handle things more automatically. However, if you're having SMART warnings on the drive, I would recommend replacing the drive, if it's still under warranty.

Ultimately, it's up to Alex, as he's the developer, for what he'd want to do.

In the Scanner settings, in the SMART tab, check the "Throttle queries" option. This will reduce the frequency that SMART queries occur, which can/will wake up the drive and systems. For StableBit DrivePool, the beta version has completely overhauled the bitlocker detection to fix the sleep issue:

The biggest issue is that the linux kernel is completely different from Windows. That is a simple statement, but there is that, and everything that goes with it. Driver support, kernel support, file system support, and more. There are a whole bunch of Linux distros, with different packages, and support and kernel versions. And there is BSD, which is very much different from Linux. So it would have to be completely rewritten from scratch. Build from the ground up. And that's not a small task. That said, I've been using linux a lot more lately, and yeah, there isn't anything quite like the StableBit software. You can get close, but it's a lot of work to do so. Not the dead simple setup of the stableBit software. And it would be nice. That said, the beta version of StableBit Cloud has "Disk Scanner" which is a very scaled back version of StableBit Scanner. https://covecube.download/Changes/CloudDiskScanner/beta

Yeah, you have to deactivate the licenses first. As for the message, it's not likely to change any time soon. The reason for that is that you can have up to 8 licenses attached to an activation ID. But you can also have licenses for one product (eg, StableBit Scanner) but not another (eg, DrivePool). Both to keep it simpler and not having a whole bunch of specific wording. And it also makes it more difficult to try and brute force activation IDs. Also, using StableBit Cloud to manage the licenses make things a lot simpler, as it handles it (semi) automatically.

If you need both systems running at the same time, for more than 30 days, then you'd want a second license. If not, you can just use the trial period, at worst. But basically: deactivate the current license on the old system disconnect the drives move hardware to new hardware (or swap motherboard/etc, or whatnot) connect the drives to the new system install StableBit DrivePool activate your license And at step 5, it will automatically rebuild the pool with the available disks. The only caveat here is that you might run into permission issues, but this is normal when moving disks to a new system, in general. You may need to reset the permissions, but that depends. But that's really all you need to do.

The latest best version is 2.3.14.1756, and there are a few memory related issues addressed by it. https://covecube.download/Changes/DrivePool/beta https://dl.covecube.com/DrivePoolWindows/beta/download/StableBit.DrivePool_2.3.14.1756_x64_BETA.exe If that doesn't help, then could you open a ticket at https://stablebit.com/contact

It only displays one system/pool/drive, at a time. Much like the normal, local UI.

Could you open a ticket at https://stablebit.com/contact ? There are some additional logs to collect (just in case it's a system specific issue), and that is the best place/way to do so.

No. Unfortunately, because we're following what is prescribed for how these types to be handled. The onus is on the other software to handle things correctly, not for us to implement workarounds for incorrect handling.

That's very odd, and you should definitely be seeing faster speeds. If you could, open a ticket at https://stablebit.com/Contact Also, doing this: https://wiki.covecube.com/StableBit_DrivePool_2.x_Log_Collection And then running the StableBit Troubleshooter, using the contact ID request number from the contact form: StableBit Troubleshooter - Covecube - Wiki

Awesome, glad to hear it! And thank you for pushing back/insisting on a better fix.

Just a heads up, Alex did take a look into this, and did find a solution that is actually lower level, shouldn't keep the drives awake and allow them to sleep. You can find the installer for this version here: https://dl.covecube.com/DrivePoolWindows/beta/download/StableBit.DrivePool_2.3.14.1744_x64_BETA.exe

Welcome! If you do run into any issues, let us know, though.

I did/do have a Mac (intel based) that I did use parallels on. And did use the software in, and it worked with no issues. Though, it wasn't a heavy load, at all.

It's "just" a VM platform. You should be able to, yes. And a quick look, you should be able to pass through the whole disk to the VM, too. https://docs.parallels.com/landing/pdfm-ug/parallels-desktop-for-mac-26-users-guide/parallels-desktop-preferences-and-virtual-machine-settings/adding-and-removing-devices/connecting-a-physical-disk-to-a-virtual-machine-as-internal

You are very welcome.

Could you open a ticket at https://stablebit.com/contact then?

If you're using file placement rules and the ordered file placement balancer, you need to configure things specifically to support this. There is a note for this in the balancer's readme, but is obscured by the fact that the balancer is built in now, rather than having to download and install. Specifically: https://dl.covecube.com/DrivePoolBalancingPlugins/OrderedFilePlacement/Notes.txt

Well, part of the issue is that we do try to minimize disk queries. StableBit Scanner (and the other products) look for disk change notifications. Eg, when a disk is connected, disconnected, etc. However, the bitlocker stuff it a special case. Our official stance on this is "no, it's not a good idea, it's actually a really bad idea". Official methods are official for a reason, and using shortcuts, hacks, and other non-official methods means that those behaviors are not documented and not supported. And in fact, are likely to be patched out of existence. Using them leads to an unstable or even unusable product. And we're actively opposed to that, because we have no desire to build, to be very blunt, a shitty product. However, I've passed on the request to Alex, the developer, to see if there is a way that we can improve things here. Because there is always room for improvement, but sometimes it can take an outside perspective. https://stablebit.com/Admin/IssueAnalysis/29129 This won't show any info unless it's posted publicly. Generally, the posts are public, but if there are code changes based on this, those are always public. So I'm posting here so if there is a change or public explantation, it's accessible here.

You shouldn't need to mess with the native service. Mostly, it makes sure that the system shutdown doesn't happen until the service has shut down/ended gracefully. But yes, restarting the "StableBit DrivePool Service" should refresh the drive list. As for why... most of this should happen invisibly, and the goal is to make sure it does. Unfortunately, the bitlocker detection causes issues on some systems. As for "full restart", do you mean of the service? If so, it's because it's loading setting from disk, checking hardware config, and running startup routines (such as checking if the pool needs mounting, etc). Depending on the system and number of disks, this can take a bit to complete. There are some advanced settings that may help, but depend on having more cores in your CPU, basically (eg, by using more threads to run background tasks). That's the thing, we are using the officially support API to check. It's that API that is what causes the drives to wake up on some systems, because Windows considers that activity, and wakes the drive. As for listening to the event viewer, I'm sure that's possible, but as you may have seen, that is a LOT of data to parse, and may cause other issues.

I apologize for missing this. In some cases, restarting the StableBit DrivePool service should forcibly refresh things. If that doesn't help, or you're still seeing issues, please do open a ticket at https://stablebit.com/Contact

By chance, do you have two hidden "PoolPart.xxxx" folders? If so, then this guide should cover how to fix things: https://wiki.covecube.com/StableBit_DrivePool_F1655 Otherwise, you have a "poolPart.xxxx" file? If so, the directory got corrupted, unfortunately. CHKDSK may fix things (but may dump things into a "found.###" folder), or you may need to run data recovery (testdisk+photorec, recuva, etc).