Christopher (Drashna)

As I said above, I don't have a lot of experience with FlexRAID, so I can't really be sure here. If the tRAID is a block based solution, then it depends on HOW it stores the blocks. I can look into seeing if it will work, but it may be a few days or more before I can let you know.

Thanks, and I've flagged the issue already. Hopefully, we can get this resolved quickly for you.

if you're using Duplication, then you'd need to have too "SSD"/feeder disks. Otherwise, duplicated data will be written to a slower disk. This may slow down the file transfer speed. Specifically, the SSD Optimizer configures the pool so that ALL new files are written to the SSD/feeder disks. If there are not enough of them (such as in the case of duplication), then it will write to the SSD/feeder disk AND to an Archive disk. Additionally, something to consider here: If you're using the pool over the network, then there may not be a real gain here. The max throughput for gigabit network is ~120MB/s (but you're more likely to see ~100-110MB/s, under ideal conditions). Also, most HDDs will get to 80-100MB/s. So you may not see a significant performance increase by using the SSD Optimizer unless you're "dumping" files onto the pool locally.

We have several posts talking about FlexRAID and the like, actually. These cover a lot of what you may want to know: http://community.covecube.com/index.php?/topic/52-faq-parity-and-duplication-and-drivepool/ As for the "few hours of updates" issue, that is most likely because of the balancing in StableBit DrivePool. There are a couple options to help "fix" this issue. Specifically, either install the "Ordered File Placement" balancer. This fills up one drive at a time, and tries to keep the contents of each folder on the same disk. This may help prevent it from needing to updated every day. Otherwise, disabling the balancing options altogether. As for the Transparent RAID option for FlexRAID, IIRC, that's a pooling solution that more deeply integrates with FlexRAID's other features. If so, then it may be easier to just use that. However, since I don't have a whole lot of experience with FlexRAID and it's various features, I'm not sure if you could use FlexRAID's Transparent RAID with DrivePool. Or if there would be any issues.

Try disabling the "read striping" option and see if that helps. Also, if you have StableBit Scanner installed on the system, then try running the 'Burst test" on the disks and see if any come back with problems. In dslabbekoorn's case, the issue was a faulty SATA cable that was causing the problem. The burst test should be able to reveal problems such as that.

Glad to hear it! And a happy new year to you as well.

Gavin, thank you for grabbing the log files. I've flagged them for Alex (the developer) and he'll take a look at them soon. Issue tracker link, for reference: https://stablebit.com/Admin/IssueAnalysis/13443

Oh, yeah, well, that would do it then! The installer was probably trying to create the log files in the temp folder before it got started installing. And when that failed... well, yeah. Glad to hear that you got the issue resolved though!

You are very welcome. And yeah, you're not going to see the most optimal savings while using StableBit DrivePool, because we do spread out the files between the disks. And as I said, "general file storage" may not see the most optimal savings anyways, as there isn't as high a chance of duplicate data, as opposed to VHD/VM storage (which I suspect the Microsoft Deduplication feature was designed for specifically).

From the text logs, there are a lot of "The device is not connected" errors. Are any of the disks in your system having issues? Also, just how full is that one drive? (How much free space does it have?).

Okay, if that's the case, then it is definitely uniquely identifying the disks. Could you grab the error reports from the system and upload them to us? http://wiki.covecube.com/StableBit_Scanner_for_Windows_Error_Reports

RFOneWatt, To be clear here: Even though File Placement Rules are part of the "balancing" engine, they may or may not respect the balancers and the realtime limites the balancers create. And vice versa. If you're using both the File Placement rules and the SSD Optimizer, it is a good idea to allow the files to be placed on the "SSD" disk as well as the archive disks to prevent any sort of conflict here. If that's not helping, the please open a ticket at https://stablebit.com/Contact/ and we can see about helping you more directly.

Shur, Could you grab the install logs from "%temp%", open a ticket at https://stablebit.com/Contact and submit the logs there? (Or attach them here). Do you have any antivirus installed on the system? If so, which? Also, is it created the "C:\Program Files\StableBit\DrivePool\" folder at all? Worst case, could you try downloading the MSI installer and see if that works? http://dl.covecube.com/DrivePoolWindows/release/download/Managed_Deployment/StableBit.DrivePool_2.1.1.561_x64_Release.msi

The easiest way would be to set the permissions on the pool a the root folder and replace the permissions "on all child objects". That, or use the WSS Troubleshooter: http://dl.covecube.com/WssTroubleshoot/Release/download/Wss.Troubleshoot_1.0.0.165.exe Select the "Reset NTFS Permissions on the pool" and run it. It will set the permissions back to a "clean" state for the pool automatically. Though, this can take a while (hours) depending on the size of the pool.

Glad to hear it!

If you're still having issues with this, then do this: http://wiki.covecube.com/StableBit_DrivePool_2.x_Log_Collection

Yeah, it should do well for a server. But you may be better off with a higher end CPU, and a cheap, $50 gfx card. And yeah, rabid fanboyism debates are never fun and always turn nasty. And both companies have come very far. but AMD is still definitely the underdog (though those APUs are pretty nice for a cheap gaming system!) That said, I prefer Intel (I have a bad track record with AMD.... my last CPU literally has a scorch mark on it..., and that's just the latest). But a lot like HDD failure rates, it's very anecdotal. I believe you'd only need the license for one PC. But I'm not sure about that. Would be best to contact them and ask. But from the looks, just one license is needed.

Could you verify the balancing settings (Click on "Pool Options" and the "Balancing"). Make sure that balancing isn't disabled, just in case. If it is enabled, what settings are you using? And which balancers do you have enabled (said from Disk Space Equalizer)? And could you get the logs from the system? http://wiki.covecube.com/StableBit_DrivePool_2.x_Log_Collection Namely, just do steps #6-8.

Normally, StableBit Scanner is very good about keeping track of the disks, and remembering the scanning progress. However, there are a few situations where this may not happen properly. Are these disks initialized and partitioned? If not, then this can happen, as there isn't' a good way to identify the disks. If they are initialized, check the "Disk Details" in StableBit Scanner. Make sure that the disk has a signature that isn't just a bunch of zeros.

In theory, it should work, if you use the Deduplication feature on the disks in the pool, and not the Pool drive directly. However, you will need to make one change first to ensure that it works properly: http://wiki.covecube.com/StableBit_DrivePool_2.x_Advanced_Settings Set "CoveFs_BypassNtfsFilters" to "false", and reboot the system. This ensures that the Dedup filter doesn't get bypassed for the disks in the pool. However, depending on your settings, the size of the disk and amount of data on the disk, as well as how often the data gets moved around, you may not see a huge savings. Microsoft estimates that you will only see about 50-60% savings at most for a file server. But in reality, it may be much, much lower for you. Also, deduplicated data is at a higher risk of loss, because if a block on the disk gets damaged, it's much more likely to corrupt/damage multiple files, instead of just the one. If you choose to enable it, I would recommend ONLY putting duplicated data on the disks with data deduplication enabled.

The APU's may be waste for that, because the gfx chipset aren't being used AT ALL really. @Ryo, the pool would go into a sort of read only mode. However, if it's a concern and you only have a couple of days left, contact us at https://stablebit.com/Contact and we'll help you out with that.

Balancing can be very slow, as we use a background IO Priority for the task. This is to avoid causing any sort of performance issues with the system. For lower end systems, that's a very good idea. But for higher end systems, it may be beneficial to use more resources. But we want to default to lower to prevent issues. The Advanced settings for DrivePool can help: http://wiki.covecube.com/StableBit_DrivePool_2.x_Advanced_Settings FileBalance_BackgroundIO FileDuplication_BackgroundIO Set these values to "False", and it may help with the speeds. The best way? On the balancer settings (the main settings), set it to "balance immediately", uncheck the 'NOt more often than" option, set the balance ratio to "100%", make sure that the "Or if at least this much data needs to be moved" option is enabled and set it to "1GB". Make sure "Allow balancing plug-ins to force immediate balancing" is enabled. Set up everything that way, and it should be much more aggressive about emptying the "feeder" disks. Specifically, this will allow balancing to occur whenever (the first two settings). Also, moving the ratio slider to "100%" means that when any files are out of place, it will attempt to balance the pool. And setting the data amount to 1GB does the same. And the "force immediate balancing" does what it sounds like.

If that's the case, then it sounds like an issue with a driver. Most likely the graphics driver.

Innocuous, Where did you send the logs to? I don't see them on our box.com account (where the upload forms send them to), and I don't recall seeing a ticket about this. Also, if restarting the service doesn't help.... then resetting the settings should definitely fix it. However, you'll lose all the settings for Scanner. http://wiki.covecube.com/StableBit_Scanner_Q4200749

Glad to hear it. And I apologize for the confusion. Hopefully everything goes very smoothly!