Christopher (Drashna)

This is very unusual. Could you do this: http://wiki.covecube.com/StableBit_DrivePool_Dashboard_Freeze But do it with the "DrivePool.UI.exe" process instead of the "Dashboard.exe" process. Also, could you grab the logs from DrivePool? http://wiki.covecube.com/StableBit_DrivePool_2.x_Log_Collection Skip steps 2-3, just upload the files. And reference this thread in the Box.com upload widgets on the linked pages.

If the issue did get resolved, great! If it didn't, I apologize for missing this! And have you used any utilities to edit the disk or resize the partition or anything of the like?

As Shane has said, if the Trial period is over, then it puts the pool into a "Read-Only" state. Meaning that it's contents can't be modified, and would give this error. However, if the trial still has time left on it, and you are getting this error, then it may be because of a bad security setting that is preventing you access.

So it does this when it changes the permissions? If so, does restarting the "Windows Server Storage Service" fix the issue?

That depends on the PCIe generation that a) the card is and the slot is. v1.x: 250 MB/s (2.5 GT/s) v2.x: 500 MB/s (5 GT/s) v3.0: 985 MB/s (8 GT/s) v4.0: 1969 MB/s (16 GT/s) Also, this is "per lane". As in per "times" it is. so a PCIe 2.0 x4, is a 4 lane card, so it can get 2GB/s or 20GT/s assuming that the motherboard is also a) running that same generation, and capable of that many lanes. Wikipedia has a lot more information about that. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PCI_Express And to be honest, I'm using a IBM m1115 card, that has been cross flashed to an LSI 2008 "IT" card. Meaning no RAID on it, just HBA. Works really great for my server. And I don't really keep up with the higher end storage stuff. It gets crazy expensive fast. As for the RAM... 4GBs isn't enough to really do that, I think. Too much RAM in use to be useful. But if you're interested: fsutil behavior set memoryusage 2 Unfortunately there isn't any specific amount that you can set. It's "default" at 1, or "more" at 2.

What that means is that if you're using the drive for something OTHER than DrivePool, it may cause issues. ESPECIALLY if you have shared folders on it. If the drive is only being used for DrivePool, there is absolutely no harm in doing this, and in fact DrivePool will be able to track these changes. And you will experience no interruptions in the pool. Talk about resilient. And yes, it's definitely okay. We just wanted to be explicit clear on the implications of remove the drive letters (as does Windows).

Oh, and just an idea for the "efficently" bit.... There is a "fsutil" command that allows you to increase the memory size used for file system cache. This may speed up performance on ... well all the disks, and reduce disk activity (like when DrivePool queries for the file/directory list). I'll have to dig it up, but if you have a lot of unused RAM, it wouldn't be a bad idea at all.

Well, that's cool to hear that you write your own BIOS's. And yeah, I'm an ASUS fan too. Though, that ASRock board.... :drool: Yeah. But I've had ASUS boards that just do stupid weird things. Like never sleep right, no matter what you do, bios update or not. Or other weirder stuff. Hence the hit or miss. But when you hit... the board is GOLD.

Okay, good to know about Condusive's Undelete. Thanks. And yes, adding VSS support is no small task. And Alex has been thinking about it (if only because I keep bringing it up every so often, because I also want Previous Versions for the pool!), but he as a lot on his to-to list, and is trying to bust through that list. But as for that recycle bin part, even the idea of implementing that part would be every bit as complicated as VSS, if not more so. And potentially dangerous (as it would likely require writing a file system filter to catch delete commands, and to differentiate them from move/delete commands). However, if you use "Folder Redirection" from Server 2012 Essentials.... it does that for the user folders automatically. And I think if you manually "move" the user folders to a network share, that it does that as well (It does enable offline file cache/sync automatically, IIRC, and I think it stores deleted files from those user folders in "recycle bins" in these folders as well)

You are very welcome. It also helps that I've been looking into this a lot lately, and my next server motherboard will support a TPM module. But don't forget, that either way, you will need that BitLocker_PoolPartUnlockDetect setting enabled for DrivePool. Either way, there is a wait period after boot before the non-system drives are unlocked. If you have any other questions, don't hesitate to ask.

LOL. I though that you'd appreciate that. If it makes you feel any better, I've been drooling over that since friend pointed it out. And trying to see if I can justify it... and how hard it would be to migrate from my AMD FX cpu. And .... yeah. And that board uses an LSI chipset for all those ports. Which is awesome. As for transfer speed... 125MB/s max theoretical for gigabit network. That's not accounting for overhead, and "regular" traffic. And assumes high quality cards, and cabling. And no interference. So, I'm not sure how effecting RAIDing 22 SSDs would be. But it would be damn fast locally! Aside from that, I'd recommend ASUS motherboads. They have been very hit or miss in the past, but when you get a good board.... they're awesome. And if you're upgrading and willing to spend a bit of money (maybe not $500 for a mobo), I'd recommend trying to find something that uses ECC RAM. It may make the system that much more stable. As for onboard, yeah, the ICH chipsets are pretty good. But if you really do want to RAID SSDs, make sure you get a chipset that actually supports TRIM in that raid.

Unfortunately, given some of those logs, I think it may be the best coarse of action. There looks to be a lot wrong, but I'm not sure. Also, to make sure, the pool is on Z:\, and you can browse that on the server, right?

There is supposed to be an "automatically unlock" option on non-system disks. But this option is only allowed when the system disk is also encrypted. That way, once the system boots, the system is completely readable and unlocked. Otherwise, you're stuck unlocking all the drives manually, every time the system boots. http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows7/How-do-I-use-the-unlock-options-in-BitLocker-Drive-Encryption Check the "automatically unlock" option. But to encrypt the system drive, you need a TPM module usually. Most consumer boards don't have this. But some higher end gaming boards do have a TPM header. Which you can then install a TPM module (buy off Amazon for like $25). Alternatively, you can disable the need for the TPM module, using a "secpol hack" Windows 8 uses a password, IIRC. But Windows 7 (and WHS2011) use a USB key to store the bitlocker information on). So during the boot process, you'd need to input a password, or make sure the USB flash drive is installed. Here is the link for said "secpol hack": http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/6229/how-to-use-bitlocker-on-drives-without-tpm/

Absolutely. Here is no problem with doing that. And I know that at least a few people definitely do that. But as dbailey has pointed out, it's better to do eSATA. The reason is that USB can be flaky, and drop the disks under heavy load sometimes. Depending on the USB controller.

Change or remove drive letter: http://wiki.covecube.com/StableBit_DrivePool_Q6811286 Mount drives to folder paths: http://wiki.covecube.com/StableBit_DrivePool_Q4822624 This method is actually how Drive Extender and Drive Bender work. They mount the files to the C:\ drive and access them that way. However DrivePool is able to access from the NTFS volume paths, so that it doesn't need a letter or mount point to access your data. However, I recommend at least the mount points, that way you can access the data if need be, or easily run maintenance on the disks (such as chkdsk). I also recommend a folder structure of C:\DrivePool\, and i## and e## for internal and external disks respectively. You can get more complicated than that, but it's a good guideline.

Well, if you're moving from DriveBender, then it may be simple. You may be able to get away with just adding the drives to DrivePool, and moving the contents from the "{xxxxxxx}" folders to the hidden "PoolPart.xxxxxx" folders. But you are right, the "long way" is almost always the most reliable method. Better safe than sorry, right?

Ideally, you should use the safely remove drive option before detaching the dock every time. Especially if any data is in use, or frequently accessed by a program/service.

How about one of these? http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157470 And Server 2012 Essentials supports up to 64GBs of RAM, IIRC. So that should be plenty for .... well most anything at home. You may be limited more by LAN bandwidth at that point. And I'm glad that DrivePool is working great with a large array. Not that it surprises me though. And yeah, it's steal at the price. Totally worth every penny though.

If this isn't directly on the pool itself (the junction points), then I believe this should be absolutely fine to do this.

Also, the 2.x version is remotely manageable, by installing on another system, and selecting the computers name. That way, no dashboard is needed.

So will checking for this file: C:\Windows\MEMORY.DMP And checking "c:\Windows\Minidump" for files.

Duly noted, and it may be in the future. However, Volume Shadowcopy Services, which is what powers Previous Versions (and Windows Backup) is unsupported. And there is pretty much no documentation on how to add support for it without using a normal NTFS volume. Since that's not what we are doing..... adding support will be problematic at best. We are aware of this limitation, and it is on our minds, but it will not be easy to add. However, these features do remain intact on the drives in the Pool, and can be accessed that way. And deleted files can be recovered by data recovery or "undelete" utilities as well (from the drives in the pool). Also, this may work: http://www.condusiv.com/products/undelete/ I'm not sure, as we haven't tested it out with drivepool.

The methods used are SmartIoctl, ScsiMiniportClassDriver, ScsiMiniPortPortDriver, AtaPassThrough, ScsiPassthrough, ScsiPassthrough48, ScsiPassthroughSunplus, and ScsiPassthroughJmicron. This list isn't comprehensive. But just the ones listed on my SSD by the "DirectIo test" utility of ours. Many of these will work, but not all return the same data. And some drivers or controllers will respond badly to some of the commands used by the different methods. Hence the "unsafe" category. Specifically, some of these other utilities either have better detection methods than we do, more experience.... or just don't care if it causes issues. A lot of them are one time utilities, so chances are it won't adversely affect your system. Scanner runs as a service and polls this information option, so stability is our TOP priority. We do not want to do anything that compromises your system's performance or stability. Well, not without your express permission first, at least. However, I'm not exactly an expert at this part. This is much more technical, and I home that I'm accurate. And because I'm not certain, I've flagged this thread for Alex (the developer), so he can respond with a definitive answer for you.

Okay, it shouldn't impact performance. But just make sure that you upload the logs (if you haven't already).

Dumping the SMART data can cause them to get VERY large, very fast. And no, you can't change the location for the logs currently.