Christopher (Drashna)

Well, in the meanwhile, is it possible to exclude the pooled drivers? Also, It looks like Forefront isn't supported with any of the Small Business Server OSs. And that is technically what Essentials is. The best option here may be to uninstalled Forefront, at least until we can figure out why it's crashing like this during shutdown.

If the system hasn't fully calculated the size, then if you reboot, it will restart the count. And if the system crashes, then it will cause it to have to recount as well. So if you wait for it to finish counting and reboot.... if it starts recounting again, then something is going wrong during shutdown. Also, you're using USB or external drives, if they're taking too long during boot, it can cause issues as well. Either of these issues can be identified by using the event viewer's "System" section.

Okay, remove the advanced config file for now (if you haven't already). Stability is more important. Could you try one method at a time by checking "Specific method" in Direct I/O Test and selecting methods in this order: SmartIoctl AtaPassThrough ScsiPassthrough ScsiPassthrough48 ScsiMiniportClassDriver ScsiMiniportPortDriver Starting at the top with the "safest" method and going down to the most "unsafest" one. After you select a method wait for it to query the selected drive and report if that method works. If you find one that works then let me know and I'll see if we can add something to the code to force that method.

Well, the "not enough space" error is normal for the situation you describe. If duplication is enabled, and there isn't enough space for the file, it will fail. As for the disks being filled up.... that's not so normal. How full is each of the disks? Also, have you installed any additional balancers or changed their settings?

In this case, it sounds like maybe a bad connection or bad cable. I've ran into that myself. Bunch of uncorrectable sector counts in SMART, and Scanner found a bunch of bad sectors. Moved it to a different port, and they all went away.... As for the notification, you should be able to just delete that in the dashboard. If it's not going away, let us know.

125MB/s is the max theortical for Gigabit network speed. So if you're hitting that ceiling, that's fantastic. As for the system drive.... we generally recommend against it, because it makes reinstallation more problematic. But if you're using it with the SSD Optimizer, it shouldn't be as much of an issue. As for teaming/bridging, yeah, that's very dependant on the drivers. If you have intel NICs, then you should be good to go. However, WHS2011 doesn't support teaming. The base OS does, but the WHS specific code will run into issues if you enable teaming.

First, the only stupid question, is the one not asked. (well, there are exceptions, but you know what I mean) The remeasure sometimes doesn't. That's why the guide for seeding the pool instructs you to reset DrivePool's settings. That ensures that it recalculates from scratch.

Well, it depends on how the files were imported. Were they copied to the pool directly? Also, what version of StableBit DrivePool are you using? And of Windows? And, no we don't maintain a database of the individual files. We measure the files, and then keep track of changes that happen after the fact (through the pool drive, or anything done by duplication or balancing). And no, this recalculation shouldn't happen at every restart. In fact, I believe it shouldn't happen unless manually initiated, or a disk has been removed or is missing, or added. And yes, it does check all the files in the Pool. And since you're using a LOT of small files here, it may be a good idea to increase the background task priority, so that if this does happen, that it will complete much faster. To do so, use the following link: http://wiki.covecube.com/StableBit_DrivePool_2.x_Advanced_Settings And set "DrivePool_BackgroundTasksPriority" to something higher (like 6).

contact us at https://stablebit.com/Contact Please use the name and/or email that you purcahsed the license with. Or post the activation ID there. Also, if you do have multiple licenses, run "msinfo32" and let us know what the BIOS Date/Version information is. If the file is not there, check each disk for the "PoolPart" folders (they should be hidden"). There should only be one of these folders on each drive. If there are more, then you may need to merge the contents (move the contents of one folder to the other).

It is definitely on the to-do list. However, it's not a top priority at the moment and may be a while before we take care of it as it will take a significant change to implement this, and there are other things we want to get done before releasing a newer version of StableBit Scanner. I know that's not really what you want to hear, though.

Try restarting the server. If it remains, then try resetting DrivePool's settings: http://wiki.covecube.com/StableBit_DrivePool_Q2299585

This thread talks about the different usage: http://community.covecube.com/index.php?/topic/37-faq-unduplicated-vs-duplicated-vs-other-vs-unusable/ For your case, I would recommend remeasuring the pool. It may not be calculating it right. Sometimes (very rarely) it miscalculates. And that sounds like what has happened ere, as the 600GB plus the 400GB of other, is roughly 1TB (or 2x~500GB).

Yup, unfortunately that is a possibility. Specifically, WHSv1 (aka WHS2003) and WHS2011 are both "OEM only" products. That means that there is no retail version. Why is this important? Because the license is only valid for the first machine it's activated on. Also, the license should could with a disk and a COA sticker. If it doesn't, then it's not legit. Period. End of story. If you don't get both, then contact PayPal because the seller is is breaking the law. Also, see about getting a refund, because ... well, yeah.

No worries. There is a lot of information to go through. And some of the "inner workings" like this aren't well documented... for a reason. We don't want people going off messing with that stuff unless they know what they're doing or they've been instructed to. And by identical locations, yes, I mean by the folder structure, and file name. Specifically, if you have "G:\Folder1\Subfolder3\thisfile1.doc" and "F:\Folder1\Subfolder3\thisfile1.doc", if you move those folder into their corresponding "PoolPart.xxxx" folders, and then get DrivePool to run a duplication pass (which is why we recommend resetting the settings, or you can change the duplication status for the pool/folder), it will compare the files and let you know if there is a "mismatch". Otherwise, if you had "G:\Folder1\Subfolder3\thisfile1.doc", "F:\Folder1\Subfolder2\thisfile1.doc" and "F:\Folder1\Subfolder3\thisfile2.doc" and move them into the Poolpart folders, you'd see: P:\Folder1\ ---Subfolder2 ------thisfile1.doc ---Subfolder3 ------thisfile1.doc ------thisfile2.doc Regards

You are very welcome. If you have any other questions, don't hesitate to ask.

No, the pool shows the entire, total available space for the pool. Since not every folder has to be duplicated, we don't want to make any assumptions. And in that configuration, you may notice that it should about 90GBs as "unusable for duplication". And yes, once you've filled the smaller drive, it will let you know. At the very least, in the UI where it will show the "Pool condition". As for which file won't be duplicated, I believe it will list it out in the logs.

If these are a single drive each, and not part of an array, that would be why. A majority of "spinning" drives will only hit up to ~150MB/s under IDEAL conditions. A RAID array uses several disks, so it's accessing content on multiple disks at the same time. Basically, it's reading in parallel, and adds the speed together. Also, DirectIo bypasses the Windows built in disk access optimization, I believe. That means that it may not access the disks as fast in all circumstances.

Okay, we'll I'll suggest the feature, as it is a good idea. https://stablebit.com/Admin/IssueAnalysis/6281 As for the SSD.... it happens. We manually enter the information about the drives ourselves (based on manufacturer specs), so not every drive may be properly identified. For instance, I had a recently OCZ Vector drive that was reporting around 1000 days... But if the age is off, then that is an issue. I've flagged the model for alex, and he'll look into it when he gets a chance. https://stablebit.com/Admin/IssueAnalysis/6282

SpeedFan also seems to cause Intel RSTe drivers to BSOD...... At least on the two systems I've played with recently. It's been brought to Alex, and I do agree that this would be a great idea.

You mean like a history for the SMART data? Or more like a "if it changes by X in Y amount of time, send a notification"? As for the age, that varies from disk to disk. And I believe that a lot of SSDs don't use the standard format for the data. It makes interpreting the data more difficult. If you could grab the model of the SSD, and get the BitFlock ID (check the "submit to bitflock" box in SMART details, and it should generate an ID after a few minutes).

Yes, it is. Thank you. I've flagged the issue for Alex. https://stablebit.com/Admin/IssueAnalysis/6280 However, I'm not sure if there is anything we can do here. It looks like the enclosure is not reporting the full SMART information from the disk. If it's not reporting it, we can't grab it. You may want to try the other specific methods and see if one works. Or see if moving the disk to a different slot helps. Also, it may be that the chipset for the enclosure doesn't like the 4TB disks and is having issues with them.

To scan multiple disks on the same controller requires editing the config file. To do so: http://wiki.covecube.com/StableBit_Scanner_Advanced_Settings And set "Scanner_DirectIoScanMaximumConcurrent to the number of disks you want to scan concurrently, or "0" for unlimited. However, that does require setting "Scanner_ScanWithDirectIo" to "True", and I believe that the setting doesn't throttle the scan. Edit: eek, I forget the link! Sorry.

If the files are in identical locations, when it makes a duplication pass, it will compare the files. If they're in different locations.... then .... yeah, that's not going to be fun. Sorry. However, you can "seed" the pool. As in add the disks to the pool, and then move the contents into the Pools' folder structure: http://wiki.covecube.com/StableBit_DrivePool_Q4142489

20% on WS2012R2E? That would have been nice! $320 instead of $400. That's not insignificant savings. Either way, yes WHS2011 was a great OS.

Not a problem. The SSD Optimizer is definitely a specialized balancer, and does take some extra care to set up properly. Namely, knowing how to use it. As for the copies, if you're coping from one server to another, from the client... that will basically half the speed you can get as you're dividing the traffic between the two systems. If you did straight server to server, you would probably see better speeds. As for WHSv1, well, the intel NIC would be part of it. They're great NICs. But even still, apparently you picked the right hardware! And yeah, 10GbE is EXPENSIVE. Since it's not a consumer tech yet, it's going to stay that way. However, what you can do get another NIC or two, and use network bridging/link aggregation to boost the speeds. Won't be as good as 10GbE, but it should be better than gigabit. That is... assuming that everything is attached to the same switch.