Christopher (Drashna)

Could you do this: http://wiki.covecube.com/StableBit_Scanner_Advanced_Settings Find the "Smart" section, check the "NoWmi", click "OK" and reboot the system.?

You're event viewer indicates an issue with "Disk 6" still, and is causing VDS errors. Could you confirm which disk this is? If it is not the Pool drive but one of the disks in the pool, it could be causing the issue. Additionally, the event viewer shows a large number of "unexpected shutdowns". If you're experiencing random reboots, this could be causing all sorts of issues, or indicative of a hardware problem. I would recommend running a memory test of the system.

I'm sorry to hear that it's still occuring. As for the boot logging, the settings are hidden a bit more in the newer builds. There should be a "Troubleshooting" section in the Start Menu. And I've updated the boot logging guide to reflect this: http://wiki.covecube.com/StableBit_DrivePool_2.x_Boot_Time_Log_Collection And do you have any antivirus or disk tools installed on the system? And could you do this: http://wiki.covecube.com/StableBit_DrivePool_Q2159701 And could you export (save) the Event Viewer logs (run "eventvwr.msc" and save the "Applications" and "System" logs and upload them to us).

Ah, okay. It may be an issue with the controller. If it doesn't properly support hot swapping, it could cause this issue. Check the device manager to see if the drives are showing up. if they are, then DrivePool isn't detecting them correctly then. And yeah, it is really nice.

Alex has identified what we think the issue is, and fixed it. If you could download the latest build, and see if it fixes the issue? http://dl.covecube.com/DrivePoolWindows/beta/download/StableBit.DrivePool_2.2.0.621_x64_BETA.exe

Odd. It may take a minute or two for the drive to show up normally, but if that isn't the case.... let us know. However, restarting the "StableBit DrivePool Service" will forcibly refresh this information without having to reboot the system. And I'm using PerfectDisk as well, and it detects drives just fine, so that's not the culprit. Though, I'll suggest the "Smart Placement" and the "Performance (Aggressive)" setting for the disks. This may give you the best performance from the pool, as more recently modified files are at the beginning of the disk.

To clarify, what did you change that allowed it to complete properly?

Well, looks normal, honestly. The placement is "random", and the big part is that it's on multiple physical disks. However, if you want equalize the duplicated data usage between the disks, then you should be able to do that. Open the "Disk Space Equalizer" balancer, and uncheck the "Equalize using unduplicated data". Let this re-balance the data, and then check the option again, and let it rebalance again. This should give you want you want.

Could you see about updating the internal beta builds? We've added additional logic to the SMART information that may fix this issue: http://dl.covecube.com/ScannerWindows/beta/download/StableBit.Scanner_2.5.2.3097_BETA.exe If that doens't help, then let us know

What settings are you using for StableBit Scanner? Do you have a work window setup? How about the throttling settings? If you could, grab screenshots of these setting pages (for easy).

Ah, okay. Thank you for clarifying. That may be a lot easier to implement. And I'll pass the suggestions along to Alex as well. https://stablebit.com/Admin/IssueAnalysis/15598 https://stablebit.com/Admin/IssueAnalysis/15599 Regards

Honestly, it depends on how you want to do it. If you have the space available, you can remove the drive you want to replace first. But you could absolutely add the new drive, and then remove the smaller drive from the pool afterwards. However, what I recommend here: Remove the drive from the pool. Use the "Duplicate files later" option. This will remove the drive quickly, as it's leaving the duplicates on the drive. After the disk is removed, it will recheck the duplication status of the pool, and reduplicate files as needed. Before it starts doing that, physically remove the "old" drive, and connect the larger drive. This way, when it starts duplicating the data, it will use the new drive most likely. This will minimize the reshuffling of the files on the pool.

If you skip the domain join, the DNS stuff isn't important at all. But to be clear, this is mostly handled by the setup process, so you don't need to worry about anything, for the most part. And to skip the domain join, it's as simple as running "reg add "HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows Server\ClientDeployment" /v SkipDomainJoin /t REG_DWORD /d 1" before running the connector. As for using WIndows 8.1 or 10 as the server, you lose out on the website, the remote desktop gateway (remoting to the systems from anywhere), the VPN (can use "Incoming Connections" but it's not as functional), the Client Backups, and the centralized management and monitoring of the systems. You can still share folders (though it may be a bit more complicated), and stream from it. That functionality works great.

So am I. And I now have 2 spare M1015's. As for the CPU, that looks great, and if you do want to upgrade later to a higher end CPU, it's still an option! As for the issue, I'm assuming you mean the BSOD issue, right? (if not, I apologize, as the thread has wandered a good amount). If so, then this is most likely a hardware issue, and short of replacing the hardware, I'm not sure what else can be done. The only things to do in this case are generally: run a memory test, run "chkdsk c: /r" and run "sfc /scannow". Otherwise, reinstall and hope it goes away.

No, he hasn't been able to get to it yet. I have re-flagged it and bumped it's priority (as well as have IMed him about it), so that we can get this resolved quickly for you. Regards

Giuseppe, Well, if it's still not sleeping properly, you may be able to use StableBit Scanner to help with this as well. http://community.covecube.com/index.php?/topic/48-questions-regarding-hard-drive-spindownstandby/ Additionally, if you're having issues with the disk sleeping (due to suspected disk access), you can use "resmon" to see the active disk handles. Just check the "Disk" tab. Sysinternal's Process Monitor can do this as well. As for marking the power status, StableBit Scanner does do that already (kind of), but we could see about adding that info to StableBit DrivePool's UI as well (which isn't a bad idea). As for reporting the total power .... that's problematic at best. While we may be able to get some stats about the power consumption, but because of how the drives work, we don't know what the active power consumption is at any given time. At best, we'd have to estimate that by monitoring the performance of the drives at all times. This would a) require a database to track this, and additional resources to monitor this. Or to "guess" what the average consumption would be. Regards

I'm sorry to hear about the failed seagates. What model(s) were they? I know that the ST3000DM001 model has a lot of issues, but otherwise, Seagate drives are very good. And I'm glad that Scanner was able to warn you about one of the drives, at least!

This depends on a lot of factors. Normally, Windows Power Management should be able to handle this, and does have a drive idle spindown timer. You may want to try configuring that. Also, set the balancer to: "Balance immediately", and enable the "But not more than once every X hours" option. Try setting this to 12 (so it only balances every 12 hours). "Balance every day, at XXXX", and set this to a good time for you (default is 1AM). These options should help reduce the access to the drive, at least from "us". However, do you have any thing else accessing the drive? Indexing it, or the like? If so, this access will wake up the drives.

Well, first, I'm sorry to hear about the drive failing. But 7-8 years is a very long life for a drive! Yup, pretty much exactly that.

Ah, okay. I'm still not 100% clear what you're getting at here. However, IIRC, on Standard, there is no Recorded TV stuff at all, IIRC. As for streaming, worst case, you could install something like Serviio, plex or emby on the server.

Well, I got the Intel RES2SV240NC card, and installed it. You can hook it up in a PCI Express slot for power, or have it mounted elsewhere and connected to molex (4pin) power. The M1015 card (well, LSI's MegaRAID util) recognizes the Expander as an "Enclosure". If you have a SAS card, and a lot of drives to hook up, it's a fantastic setup. I need to do some testing for performance, but I'm much happier with the setup now!

You're very welcome. As for "seeding", well, I believe it was initially a farming reference... so placing the seeds where they're going to grow. Or something like this. However, as for seeding and reseeding the Pool: http://wiki.covecube.com/StableBit_DrivePool_Q4142489 It's basically placing the files into the correct location for the Pool to use it (see the correlation there). Unseeding it, would be to reverse the process, moving the files out of the PoolPart folder and into the root of the drive.

Ah, okay. DNS is rather simple once you wrap your head around it. But yes, it can be confusing. DNS is what converts human readable addresses (such as "community.covecube.com") into machine readable IP addresses (such as 168.62.48.183). DNS is also used as a core component of a domain, as it generateds the names for the system, as provides a lot of "hidden functionality" (such as identifying the different roles for the domain). If you're DNS servers are not properly configured, it will block your access to the internet, as nothing will resolve. However, if you're not using a domain, then you don't need to worry about DNS. If you are going to use the domain .... then there is a little bit of setup needed. This is a bit on the complicated side... and some if it is automated for you, when you set up the server. First thing to do is check your ISP's DNS servers (in the "WAN" IP address/status of your router). Or you can use "8.8.8.8", which is Google's DNS server). Once you have that, you'll want to make sure that these DNS servers are set up as the "DNS Forwarders" in the DNS server on your server: https://www.petri.com/configure-dns-forwarders-windows-server-2012-r2 Then, you'll want to configure the server to use a static IP address (so it never changes). https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd894437(v=ws.10).aspx (use the Server 2008 R2 guide ,as it should be about the same). Make sure the preferred DNS for the server is set to itself, and ONLY itself. (eg, use the static IP address of the server here). After doing that, you'll want to set up the DHCP settings on your router. Most have a list of DNS server (3) that you can specify for your network. Set the first to be the server's IP address. Set the second one to be the router's IP address (usually 192.168.1.1), and set the third to be the ISP's or Google's DNS server. This will ensure that all the clients are setup to use the DNS properly and to fall back on other devices, if the server is no longer accessible.

Is the D:\ drive in the pool? If so, then you can "seed" the pool: http://wiki.covecube.com/StableBit_DrivePool_Q4142489 If not, then you could add it and then seed the pool. Either way, this moves the contents into the pool's structure, so it should be rather quickly. Once that's done, you should be able to reshare the folder. Also, you should be able to "stop sharing" the folder in the dashboard. Otherwise, run "fsmgmt.msc", oepn the "Shares" section, and find the "Music" share. Right click on it and select "Stop Sharing". Then rerun the WSS Troubleshooter.

As for the DrivePool issues, reset the settings: http://wiki.covecube.com/StableBit_DrivePool_Q2299585B This may fix the issue. If not, then it's a bit more difficult (basically it's unseeding and reseeding the disks).