Christopher (Drashna)

I'm not sure what you mean by that. But any role you add will want to be backed up. And Server Backup won't backup the pool (and will error out if it tries). That, and you should be able to exclude the "PoolPart.xxxx" folders, if needed.

Randy, there is a Box.com upload widget on the pages linked above. Those will allow you to upload the files. In fact, that's what we usually use and recommend for larger files. The "z" you see there stands for "Zulu". As in zulu time, or UTC.

Yeah, it's not quiet at all. However, it's not *that* loud. But then again, I have the "SAS" model of the one you linked as my server. And I'm used to hearing it all the time. Great white noise generator.... Though I got mine from a friend for just the shipping. And yes, Super Micro has similar cases. http://www.supermicro.com/products/chassis/4U/ The SC846, SC847, and SC848 cases are all 4U cases with 24 bays, I think. And as for your USB issue, I'm not surprised. Its why I don't like USB. It has it's uses, but long term uptime isn't one of them, IMO.

Mick pretty much nailed this one. But yes, you'd need to specify the gateway (your homeserver.com domain name), in the "Advanced" tab, in the "Connect from anywhere" section. At least from the desktop app. There should be a "Gateway" setting for any mobile app, as this is a standard feature, usually used by enterprises for securely accessing work/enterprise machines remotely.

Also, the "W32.Suspicious.Heur" type indicates that the Heuristic scanner identified this file as a suspicious file. It means it's not sure, but it may match records it has on file. So, basically definitely a false positive.

Well, good setup overall! As for the drives, do you have anything that you need to store on them outside of the pool? I can think of a few thigns, but unless your installing additional roles on the server, I don't see a need to. So yes, putting the drives in the pool would be best. And even if you decide you need to use them outside of the pool, no need to partition them. You can still use the disks directly. However, any space you use outside of the pool is shown as "other"

Shouldn't be that often, but yeah, I hear you.

Yeah, NTFS permissions can be .... And yeah, just because the admin has rights, doesn't mean it can always access the files. As for removing the disks, using the "force removal" option should have allowed you to remove the disk anyways.

I don't use a feeder disk for my pool, actually. However, if I were to set one up, I'd use an SSD or two. But yes, lots of writes "thrash" the disk and reduce it's lifespan. However, the more modern SSDs are more tolerante of this but still experience it to a degree. However, if you have Scanner installed and the drive does report it's "health", then you should have warning when to replace it.

Randy, is DrivePool set to balance immediately. And yes this is very odd. I'm going to see if I can duplicate this issue. In the meanwhile, could you enable tracing and let it sit for an hour: http://wiki.covecube.com/StableBit_DrivePool_2.x_Log_Collection Also, could you get a dump of the scanner service http://wiki.covecube.com/StableBit_DrivePool_Service_Memory_Dump

So, you mean network shares then. In this case, then no, we don't support that right now. Sorry.

The license is per machine. Specifically, the license is yours. For your lifetime. But each license is only allowed to be activated on one machine at a time. You can deactivate it and then move the license to another system. But if you only have one license, then you can only have it activated on one machine. This applies to scanner and DrivePool. However, if you have a license for either, you can get additional licenses at a discount ($9.95 off the price). Either open up your order page, and click the link to purchase additional licenses, or grab your activation ID and head to "http://stablebit.com/Buy/" and input your Activation ID in the box at the bottom of the page, and hit "Apply Activation ID". This will list the discounted prices.

I'm glad to hear it! And yeah, the wiki instructions need to be cleaned up a bit. It's on my to-do list. And the issue you may have been having finding the service was that it is listed under "StableBit DrivePool Service", and you may have been looking for "DrivePool". But then again, "weird things happen" when you're really tired. But I'm glad that you're very happy with DrivePool. And yeah, much more responsive that Drive Extender! Also, for WHS2011, the hard coded limit is 8GBs of RAM. Just in case you wanted/needed to know.

Because we don't wish to write to the disk. In fact, with Scanner, we avoid writing to the disk at all (except for file recovery). And if we were to "fix" this section, it would mean that the file affected would not be recoverable by data recovery tools. Also, while DrivePool may be aware of information from Scanner, Scanner isn't aware of DrivePool.

I can think of a couple of reasons: temp/cache files. Keep it in an easy to clean location. But for the most part, Since SSDs are fairly small, it's better to use just one partition for the entire drive, and periodically clean the disk up.

NAS drive? Do you mean like the WD Red drives, or the Seagate NAS drives? If so, absolutely. Any disk can be used. And as for shares, the pool should function like any other drive. There are some exceptions, but for the most part, it should. So you absolutely can share folders on the Pool without issue. If you are duplicating EVERYTHING (which is a good idea), then yes, you'd only has approximately 8TBs of usable space Closer to 7.2TBs, as you will have approx 14.5TBs of available space as reported by Windows. The "higher than 2x" duplication is for creating more copies. The advantage is that folders duplicated x3 or x4 or higher can tolerate more than one disk failing or going missing. The disadvantage is that it uses up that much more space. And yes, it would use up 250GB more (for a total of 750GBs used out of the pool).

Anything outside of the pool (like just on the drives) is marked as other. Also, stuff used by the OS (such as shadow copies for Previous Versions/System Restore), or in the recycle bin is marked as "Other". Additionally, depending on file sizes and sector sizes, there usually is some discrepancy between the actual amount of data on the disks, versus how much space is used up on the disks. Usually this isn't much, but as the pool grows in size, this can add up.

I know what you mean. That's why I switched to DrivePool as well. Also, for installing to the SSD, I'd recommend doing this: http://connecteddigitalworld.com/2011/09/20/installing-whs-2011-or-sbs-2011-essentials-on-ssd-or-sata-hard-drives-smaller-than-160gb/ That will install the "C:\" drive to the whole SSD, instead of creating a 60GB partition and the rest D:\.

You are very welcome. And let us know what you end up going with, and how you've set it up. I'm sure there are others that will be interested.

Go to the Balancer settings. Set "Balancing" to "Never". There isn't a good way currently to control file placement. The other option is the "Ordered File Placement" balancer Plugin, that fills one disk at a time. https://stablebit.com/DrivePool/Plugins

I'm glad to hear that you're switching. I think you'll be very happy that you did. As for DrivePool v2.x, it lacks full dashboard integration, but it does create a tab in the dashboard from which you can administer the pool from. It's just not as integrated into the dashboard. As for the Wireframes, we don't currently support that, but it's been requested in the past. We are considering it for the future though (no promises). And as for removing disks, well, both DrivePool and Scanner identify the volumes mounts (drive letter or folder path), as well as the volume labels. If that's not good enough, if you have both installed, DrivePool will add the model and serial number for the disks to the tool-tips in the GUI. Though, for ease of identifying disks, I would recommend mounting them to folder paths (such as "C:\DrivePool\i##" and "C:\DrivePool\e##"). http://wiki.covecube.com/StableBit_DrivePool_Q4822624

The normal DirectIO settings are fine as is. You should not need to change this setting. And the "UnsafeDirectIo" setting is different from the "Do not use DirectIO when querying SMART" setting. It' a list of methods that can cause issues with your controller if used. And it's off by default. Hence "unsafe". Normally, it should not be enabled, unless you know what you are doing, or support directs you to do so. The "Do not use DirectIO when querying SMART" setting is something else from this entirely. There are a couple of methods we used to query SMART information, and this gives you some control over that. But please do check out Alex's response above.

Like I said, you're definitely not using it then (it's in the "Advances Settings" config file). But when all the disks disappear like this, and even Disk Management is unresponsive, that usually indicates an issue with the Virtual Disk service. If this happens again, then definitely let us know. Also, if this is frequent, uninstall Scanner or at least disable the Scanner service and see if the issue goes away. If it does, then definitely let us know. Though, I would definitely recommend checking the SYSTEM event viewer logs for errors or warnings to see if there is something there that may indicate an issue.

Steve, Windows (Server) Backup explicitly depends on the Volume Shadowcopy Service. Without it, it cannot take a snapshot of the disk. And without this snapshot, it cannot backup. Specifically, it uses the snapshot to grab all the data, as this should never change. But because the VSS service is so well documented (note: add dripping sarcasm to that statement when you read it), it's very difficult to add support. Specifically, Microsoft has ONLY documented the commands to send to the service to do stuff. It hasn't documented how to *add* support to a file system at all. I do keep on bugging Alex about this, because VSS support (even partial) would be awesome. As for your specific error, I'm not sure. A quick search shows that a full disk check usually resolves that issue though (chkdsk /r)

Okay, glad to hear it. If it does happen again, please do let us know.