Christopher (Drashna)

Tim, It is definitely possible. Are you using UnsafeDirectIo on the system? If you're not sure, then you're definitely not. And what hardware are you using (motherboard, controller cards, USB enclosures, etc)? As for troubleshooting.... there is only one component that would really do this, and that is the background service. However, you can disable SMART querying per disk. This may help. Also, could you duplicate the issue again? And get a crash dump when this happens? http://wiki.covecube.com/StableBit_DrivePool_System_Freeze Note: this will cause a BSOD (intential) and the dump may be VERY large. Use the Box.com upload widget on the linked page to upload it to us. Include a link here, or a description of the issue.

Pads Looks like there is an issue creating/moving it to the Pool. I've created a bug for it, and Alex will look into it.

Is anything else accessing the drives? Also, try stopping the "StableBit Scanner Service" and see if it exhibits the same behavior. If it doesn't, then Scanner is waking the drives. If this is the case, see if the "only query during work window or when scanning" option and see if that helps. If the behavior continues with the Scanner service disabled, then something else is accessing the drives and causing them to wake up.

As I said, it's on the "to do" list, and he's definitely working on it. But yes, hopefully, he'll get this issue fixed soon.

Oops. That's definitely a bug, then. Though, are all of these "disks" definitely different disks (and not mutliple partitions on one or more disks? Either way, could you upload a memory dump of "DrivePool.Service.exe" and "DrivePool.UI.exe" via this link? http://wiki.covecube.com/StableBit_DrivePool_Service_Memory_Dump Also, would you see if this behavior is still present in the newest beta? http://wiki.covecube.com/Downloads#2.X_-_For_all_Windows_Operating_Systems.2C_Windows_Vista_and_newer

Ah, yeah, that would do it. And specifically here, any time an "add-in" repeatedly crashes the dashboard for ANY reason, it will be automatically disable. While there are a number of advantages to doing this, it can cause problems as well. As you have seen. For the most part, just change the letter and run the WSS Troubleshooter: http://wiki.covecube.com/StableBit_DrivePool_Utilities That, or manually "recreate" the now missing shares, after changing the drive letter.

Unfortunately, not really. Adding Reparse point support took a lot longer that expected. However, it is definitely on the "to do list" and Alex has been looking into it: http://wiki.covecube.com/Development_Status#Add_Pool_Parts_from_Virtual_Volumes

SMB being "Windows File Shares". Also, are you using the Network IO Boost option?

Reboot the server, or the storage server service. Sometimes "weird things happen" If it persists, then launch the dashboard in "safe mode" (link on server, or the options menu on the client dashboard launcher, and select the "allow me to choose which add-ins to load". If everything is enabled.... Grab the logs from "C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows Server\Logs", and specifically the ones that start with "dashboard". Also get a memory dump of the dashboard: http://wiki.covecube.com/StableBit_DrivePool_Dashboard_Freeze And either email the logs to be at christopher@covecube.com or open a ticket at http://stablebit.com/Contact and attach the logs there.

DrivePool doesn't care how the drives are connected. Heck, you could use IDE if you .... really had to, and StableBit DrivePool wouldn't have an issue with that. As for your questions: yes. Basically. We don't offer parity, but you can use products such as FlexRAID or SnapRAID in conjunction with our product to get that functionality. As for the balancing, you can disable it, set it to run immediately, or at a specific time. https://app.box.com/s/socc22rkp1p6hybc1h84 But otherwise, the features you have outlined, DrivePool sounds like a great fit. Additionally, DrivePool features integration with our other product: StableBit Scanner. Specifically, if a drive is marked as damaged or has SMART warnings, DrivePool can clear the contents of the drive, hopefully before it fails. May be worth checking out as well.

Part of what we look for when we associate the license to the hardware is the system disks HDD signature. So encrypting the disk would change that and can trigger this behavior. But this should be a one time thing. If it happens again (or repeated), that is not expected (and we agree, not desired) behavior. If this is the case, then please open a ticket at http://stablebit.com/Contact so we can see about resolving this issue. As for the software, the Pool should remain accessible (albeit, read only, I beelive) while this happens. Otherwise, it should not interfere with the system. But as I said, if this is happening repeatedly, then this is an issue what we need to fix. Does DiskCryptor run as a system service? If it does, then you could add it as a dependancy or the StableBit services, so they don't start until after it has. Otherwise, there is a setting for DrivePool meant to handle "late arriving" disks (such as with BitLocker). http://wiki.covecube.com/StableBit_DrivePool_2.x_Advanced_Settings Set the value of "BitLocker_PoolPartUnlockDetect" to "true".

The x# is the total number of copies of the file that exist on the pool. And by "copies", x1 means only one "copy" of the file, so that if a drive fails, you will lose data. x2 means that the is a copy of the file on two different drives, x3, three drives, etc. And if you change the duplication status, during the next pass, it will scan the pool and delete un-needed duplicates as necessary. As well as copy files to another disk, as needed.

Doug is absolutely right here. By default, we don't scan disks on the same controller at the same time, because that can cause a bottle neck. Specifically, the controller only has a certain amount of bandwidth that can be used, and depending on the drive and controller, that can saturate the bus being used. Which means if you're accessing files on another disk on the same controller, you may notice a drop in performance. Doug has illustrated the settings window in the WHSv1 version, but the same settings exist in the 2.X version as well.

bobbyc, This is why we generally recommend manually changing the drive letter to something not commonly used. For instance, Y:\ or B:\. Neither of these are used often and should be available. In fact, Windows should never attempt to use B:\ normally, so it's a great letter for DrivePool.

Okay, I wasn't sure about that. I know that ZFS is pretty popular in the Linux community though.

You can definitely find similar for cheap. Or buy a larger box (microATX) and add a second (or third) network adapter. There are downsides to that box though. You can't add any more cards to it, no room. Also, it's very finicky about the RAM, and only takes SO-DIMMs (laptop). Aside from that, I'm loving it, and it idles at about 10% usage. And yes, I paid full price. $129 for the box, and ~$50 for a WD Scorpio Black (laptop drive, 2.5", 7200 RPM). I had the RAM, but ... yeah, I'm pretty sure that is why the system was dropping connection periodically. Once I disabled webfilter (and the memory usage dropped to like 30%, instead of like 70%), the issues stopped. So it definitely looks like damaged RAM. But look at it this way, that's about $200-250 for a high end consumer, or low end commercial router. Which you'd pay $200-300 for anyways. And may not get half of the features. It's a worthwhile investment.

That would definitely work, I was using a P4 for pfsense, and it worked okay. If you plan on using the web filtering and Antivirus, then this may be on the low side for specs. http://www.sophos.com/en-us/products/unified-threat-management/tech-specs.aspx?utm_source=Non-campaign&utm_medium=PDF-link&utm_campaign=PDF-DS-UTM Sophos recommends a Dual or Quad core CPU, and 2GBs of RAM. And I second that. And that's why I went with the box I did. It's dual core w/ hyper threading (4 cores) and supports up to 8GBs of RAM. Has 2 NICs, and is very low powered. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16856205007

That depends, really. If you have a lot of "uncorrectable sectors", or if this value, or reallocated sectors count RAPIDLY increase, then you should RMA the drive (or more than 100 for either). Independent. We will identify bad sectors, but we do not write to them. Ever. The reason being that if you write to them, then you can no longer recover the data. Additionally, they will "go away" normally, the next time they are written to (the firmware automatically reallocates the sector, and your "reallocated sector count" should increase when this happens, I believe). If you wish to force the bad sector to be fixed, run "ckdsk x: /r", where X: is the drive in question. This attempts to recover bad sectors, or force the disk to reallocate them. Additionally, if you're using Windows 8 or 8.1, or Server 2012, or 2012 R2, you can add "/scan" to that command to run it "online" (so the disk can be used while scanning, isntead of knocking it completely offline) Actually, writing data is how they're "fixed". But I understand what you mean. As for how often? If you're adding a LOT of data regularly, then maybe every 7 days (once a week) may be a better option. However, since you're reading when scanning, there shouldn't really be a "too often" here. Additionally, the scan may trigger the disks internal error correct and remap sectors before they become a problem (which is what is supposed to happen normally) If you reinstall, then the disks will need to be rescanned, as that logging data will be wiped. You can mark the disks as "good" to delay this, though. I think I've covered everything sufficiently here. If not, then please ask away!

That's expected. the Volume Shadow copy service (VSS) doesn't work on the pool. Specifically there is next to no documentation on how to support VSS on the file system level, which is what we need to support it. So until we're able to add it.... You will get snapshot errors for the DrivePool disk.

Well, there is Grey Hole, unRAID, ZFS, and a few others.

@alkelly, I'm sorry to hear about the performance hit. That shouldn't be happening. If you could open a ticket at http://stablebit.com/Contact, I'd love to get this issue resolved for you. If you're using Read Caching, try disabling that temporarily, and see if that helps. Also, is Network IO Boost enabled? And could you do this: DrivePool v1: http://wiki.covecube.com/StableBit_DrivePool_Log_Collection DrivePool v2: http://wiki.covecube.com/StableBit_DrivePool_2.x_Log_Collection Let that run that way for about an hour, and then upload it.

Again, These programs hook into the VSS framework, which is well documented. The issues is that supporting VSS on a file system level... The driver for DrivePool is a file system driver. It emulates a real file system. And the issue we face with VSS support is that supporting it on the file system level is not documented. At all. I've talked with Alex extensively about this, because I do want VSS support for the pool as well. But consider this: Microsoft DISABLED VSS for Drive Extender on V1 in Power Pack 1. Because it was not working reliably. This is coming from the company that created and maintains NTFS. Also, Drive Bender is working on adding VSS support as well. They have a beta out, but the backups don't work reliably. And their answer for why is "we don't know".

Welll thank you for trying to help. However, the issue here is that those links are how to read from the VSS service/files, and not how to support them ON the file system. And that's the issue. I'll make sure Alex sees the links, just in case they turn out to be helpful though. Though that last link is for the VHD file format (used by HyperV primarily)

When this happens again (if it does), grab a dump of the service: http://wiki.covecube.com/StableBit_DrivePool_Service_Memory_Dump As well as grab any Error Reports from the system: version 1.X: http://wiki.covecube.com/StableBit_DrivePool_Error_Reports version 2.X: http://wiki.covecube.com/StableBit_DrivePool_2.x_Error_Reports As for the image attachment size, what size were the images?

Well, just to let you know, the "to do" list for sophos is NAT, web filtering (which make 2-3 posts, as there is a LOT there), Active Directory authentication, and then VPN. I am really enjoying it. Though I'm having one issue with it.. but I suspect that is because the RAM I'm using may be damaged (reused, not new). The issue is that when the web filter is on, it's occasionally dropping the WAN connection, which is pretty bad. But as I said, I reused RAM from a system that wasn't entirely stable... so now I know what the issue was.....