Christopher (Drashna)

Stuff like this wouldn't show up in the text logging. That's entirely "service output" and not the driver logging. That's why I asked for the file system logging. It's harder to read, but may give a good idea of what is going on. I've flagged the issue here: https://stablebit.com/Admin/IssueAnalysis/6293

Unless you need some of the newer features, then using 1.3 would be the better option. It's more tightly integrated into the dashboard. However, if you need/want some of the features such as reparse point support, or the File Placement rules, then you should use 2.1. Also, it's worth noting that the license is valid for either product, and the pool is backwards and forwards compatible.

I'm glad to hear that everything has "settled down" and in. Glad to hear it! As for DHCP.... I don't personally. You're router should be fine. But I would recommend configuring it to hand out your server's IP address as the primary DNS, then the router's IP as the secondary (or skip this) and the last entry as either your ISP's or Google's DNS servers (as most consumer routers have spots for 3 DNS servers). This ensures that your network will continue to have internet access in the case of your server crashing, and you can use the domain "properly" (and no autoconfigure). And is this Server 2012 Essentials, or Server 2012R2 Essentials?

... Yup, pretty much exactly that. :-) At least for StableBit DrivePool. Once it's reinstalled and reactivated, it should recreate the pool, just as it was. You may need to reset permissions and reshare the folders, but everything else you have exactly correct. As for Server 2012 to Server 2012R2... There is no upgrade path. It's a clean install. If you have clients joined to the domain, you'll need to leave the domain on each computer. That will delete the user accounts on those systems, so you may want to make sure they're synced, or you run the "Windows Easy Transfer Wizard" on the system to migrate the settings.

Could you do this then? http://wiki.covecube.com/StableBit_DrivePool_2.x_Log_Collection

If you're more comfortable doing so, please post in whatever language you are more familiar with. As for the "Drive Empting" option: If you mean in the "File Placement settings", it is basically asking if you want the the rules to be respected even if a disk is being emptied by a balancer.

Yeah, unforutantely, it's pretty strict about that. I know it may not help now... but in the future, if you have a drive with enough space space, you could create a VHD, mount it in the restore enviroment (Shift+F10 to bring up a command prompt), and then restore to that. Once that's done, you could clone the VHD's content to the SSD. It's a bit convoluted, but it's an option that would work.

Wow, that's a lot of drives! And don't get me wrong. SMART may not be a good idicator of the drive's health. But it is a good indicator of problems. (aka, it's the red flag that something is already wrong, as opposed to letting you know that something may go wrong soon). So I absolutely understand wanting to have the SMART data from your drives. And yes, the surface scans can take a while to do. There is an option to run them in parallel on the same controller which may speed that up (advanced config). If you are interested, let me know. As for the SMART warnings kicking off a scan, that would definitely be a good idea. And as I said, Alex has looked at the API to do this, and it is definitely possible. But it's going to require a serious overhaul. And we have a few projects we'd like to release sooner rather than later. So our priority is on those, instead of .... well basically rewriting Scanner. I'm sorry that it adversely affects you in the meanwhile. But Alex does plan on adding the functionality.

First, are you using the NFS Server role in Server Essentials? Or something like HaneWin? Also, do you have any spaces in the shares name? This can cause issues, IIRC.

If you mean the "Start" button in the toolbar, then that allows it to scan it as per the other rules. If you want to force it to scan immediately, there is a start/play button in the disk details (next to the volume map), if you click on the "+" next to the disk.

Well, you're license for StableBit DrivePool is ready to be activated, actually. So that should let you activate just fine. If it doesn't, please head to https://stablebit.com/Contact and open up a ticket and we'll get that resolved for you. As for hte client computer backups, yes you definitely can. If it doesn't let you move the folder to the existing one... there is a registry hack that you can do. Stop the client backup service on the server (there may be 2-3 services for it), and then open up Regedit. Find "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows Server\Backup". And find the "DatabaseName" string. Set this to whatever path you want it to be, and then start the services back up. It may show the computers as "archived" but they will still be there. Also, I'd highly recommend setting up a Server backup drive. It's a nightly and incremental backup. Would allow you to restore to a new drive without any issues. I've even used it to clone a disk to a SSD, as well.

It should actually rename both files simultaneously, actually.

StableBit DrivePool doesn't care. As long as it sees the disks, it's happy. The issue would definitely be the USB controller and Windows here. However, this sounds like an issue with the hardware, though. Check out this link: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc725873(v=WS.10).aspx And USB drives should should have no issue with port multiplication, it's eSATA that does. And for that, we recommend any card that uses the ASM1061 chipset. Such as this: http://community.covecube.com/index.php?/topic/46-siig-sc-sa0m11-s1-pci-express-20-low-profile-ready-sata-iii-60gbs-2-port-controller-card/&do=findComment&comment=4771

You are very welcome. I know that Alex uses a number of these controllers, actually. And I'm glad that you could catch one of the shows that I've appeared on.

I'm pretty certain that the answer is yes.

Removing the drives is the only official way to do so. However, it is possible to do this "quickly and quietly". If you move the contents of the hidden PoolPart.xxxx folder to the root of the drive, and then delete the now empty PoolPart folder, and do that for each disk in the Pool you want to remove, it will "disappear". Then you can add the disks to the other pool (if you want), and then use the "seeding" guide to add these drives to the remaining pool: http://wiki.covecube.com/StableBit_DrivePool_Q4142489

That's actually completely normal, from the looks of your system. When new files are put onto the pool, it places them on the disk with the most (absolutely) free space. That means that all of those 3TB drives are going to have to be 900GB filled before DrivePool will start to put data on the 2TB drive. As for the other space:http://community.covecube.com/index.php?/topic/37-faq-unduplicated-vs-duplicated-vs-other-vs-unusable/ 5-6GBs sounds about right. This is most likely "Slack space" as defined in the last bullet in my reply in that thread. Personally, I have 35TBs and about 10GBs of "other". So that sounds about right. As for the performance, it doesn't report performance that occurs outside of the pool driver. That means, it only shows performance if you're accessing or writing to the pool.If that is the case, and you're not seeing performance, then the "performance counters" on the system have gotten corrupt. To fix that, do this: http://wiki.covecube.com/StableBit_DrivePool_Q2150495

Do you have a work window specified? Also, is it throttling based on disk activity or heat?

Check the balancing settings. You can set it to occur at a specific time of day, or immediately but not more than once every X hours (12 may be a good setting). Als, you could set a work window for StableBit Scanner. And once you've done that, you can set it to only query during the work window.

By default, the the drives marked as "SSD" should recieve the files first. You many notice red/orange arrows that appear below the bar graphs for the drives. These are the "real time placement limiters". All the archive disks should have them at the beginning of the drives, indicating that they should not be used to place files on immediately. And the SSD drives should have them at about 70%, meaning that's how full they can get before using another disk. If the pool was already balancing, it may not have shown them yet. But when you copy files, it should use the real time placement limiters for determining where they go first, and then follow any other enabled balancers.

I'm sorry to hear that. However, even if you don't get the SMART data, there are other benefits to running StableBit Scanner. Namely, the surface and file system scans. They may help identify a problem disk, just as surely as the SMART data, in fact. But I definitely do understand your situation.

yeah, unfortunately, sometimes the dashboard doesn't "get the hint" and fails to remove the notifications properly. As for why it happened, could be a bad or loose connection, a bad cable, etc. I've actually seen that on my system, where a bad cable was causing SMART errors and causing Scanner to report bad sectors. As soon as I moved the disk, the errors went away. So, even if the disk is healthy, well, any point of failure between the disk and the software can cause "false positives" basically.

Basically anything that is "server" oriented. I've used ESET NOD32 in the past (on WHS2011). But on Server 2012R2 Essentials, you'd need ESET File Security. I used a trial version for a while and was very happy with it. It is, however a paid solution.

If you send the "C:\ProgramData\StableBit DrivePool" folder to us, we can take a look at that. As for the space that isn't showing up, it is possible that it's being taken up by the "Volume shadow copy service". If it is, it wouldn't show up normally. You can however see the files by using the "previous versions" feature.

Well, by default, it shouldn't let the drives get that full. The "Prevent drive overfill" balancer is specifically supposed to stop that from happening. The reason for that, is that even if you don't have duplication enabled, it may still give you issues (heck, drives give you trouble if they're nearly completely full. And that may be what is goig on here. If the pool is balancing, please let it do so and hopefully clear out some of the data from these overfilled drives.