Christopher (Drashna)

Glad to hear it! And yeah, a bad drive can cause issues in the pool.

Well, I can't say that I've had that bad of an issue with eSATA. But I can definitely understand it. But I will wholeheartedly agree with SIL chipsets. I've never been a fan, and the last few cards I've used are garbage. (including a 3132 card). But I've had good look with HighPoint's RocketRAID 2720SGL card. But it does use a Marvell chipset (for better or worse, depending on your preference). And yeah, JMicron chipsets seem to be pretty stable (the JMb6xx is JMicron, I believe). But I'm not a fan of external at all. A number of members here do use USB and eSATA. I... have had too many issues and have seen too many to trust them (I've been a member of the WHS community since Dec 2007, so I've seen a lot)

Yes. As for increasing the file system cache size... It's not really supported, by us or Microsoft, but it's rather simple to do so: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc785435.aspx "memoryusage" section..

Okay, then if that fixed it, it may be an issue with how Scanner looks for the disks. One of the changes in 2.5 was how we query the disks.

I would recommend checking the event viewer on the server in question. Look for disk, ntfs, smb or other related errors in the "SYSTEM" event logs. To be honest, I expect one or more of your disks are having issues. And what errors are appearing in SMART? Some are more serious (and indicate more of an issue) than others. As for swapping cards, it depends on how the controllers work. If they are just passing the disks through, then you may have no issues doing that.

MKLV, Well, first I can say that I've never actually heard of that AV solution. As for the threat, I can say it's a false positive. All the code is "in house". As for why it would trigger it... we read from some "deep level" stuff in the system, as well as scan files, and repair them. So any of these *could* trigger that warning. But more likely, it was a heuristic check that thinks the exe file looks similar to something it has on file. That, or some AV's will look at the icon or the file name and ASSUME it's a virus. The fact that it's called "Scanner" could be setting it off. But don't trust me, something I use when I am not sure about a detected threat: https://www.virustotal.com/ It uses a bunch of different engines to scan the submitted file. Edit: .... Yeah, look at the type. W32.suspicious.heuristic .... That means the file looks similar to what it's seen in the past.

Well, that's good to hear. And yeah, looking into the cards, I noticed that they use the same base chipset. And yes, SATA III (6gbps) is much nicer. In fact, I just ordered a M1115 off of ebay due to some extra cash coming in that I didn't expect. And as I've been having issues with the disks that are on my HighPoint RocketRAID card... I think I may be swapping the cards out. And nice to see another Norco user. I have a RPC 4220 (1st gen, the one with only one SSD mount... I mean 2.5" drive mount.... ) And I'm glad to hear that you absolutely love our products.

Otispresley, That is very odd. I say odd, because DrivePool doesn't need a drive letter at all here. So it .... should work. Another option here then would be to set up the system to set new disks as "offline" by default, and then use Disk Management (or diskpart) to manaully set the drive online and manually assign a letter or folder mount path for each disk This is actually what I do. It's more complicated, but if you are VERY hands on with your system....

Basically, yes. But if you are moving machines or this is a fresh install, be warned that you will likely have to "import foreign disks" in Disk Management.

Thank you for submitting it. If it's the ticket I think it is, I've already forwarded it to Alex, and hopefully he'll get to it in the next few days. As for the balancer, if it's causing issues, please do uninstall it for the time being, until we can get this sorted out.

ep, You said this is a clean server, right? No antivirus, disk imaging tools or the like? If so, this is VERY odd. If this happens again (I hope not though), get a memory dump of the DrivePool.Service.exe process and submit it to us. http://wiki.covecube.com/StableBit_DrivePool_Dashboard_Freeze In the meanwhile, could you submit the Error Reports (if there are any), so we can see if there were any reported issues? http://wiki.covecube.com/StableBit_DrivePool_2.x_Error_Reports

otis, if you're creating a new pool, then yes, it may have an adverse affect. The reason is, this disables the drives from "auto-mounting". As in being automatically assigned a new letter. (And "mountvol /e" re-enables auto-mounting)

Yeah, quickly scanning gets you in all sorts of trouble. And I'm guilty of doing that from time to time too. But sometimes the config file doesn't like to take (it happens, not sure why). But very nice find. IIRC, these cards do use an LSI chipset. Though, there is one major difference I'm seeing between the 1015 and the 1115... and that's SATAII vs SATAIII. Mainly a big deal with SSDs or RAID arrays, but otherwise, it's a great card.

Okay, that would do it then. It's during the installer that it checks for the "Windows Server" folder. It doesn't "appear" if you install the role afterwards.

I can't seem to be able to reproduce the IIS issue on any version of windows. It seems to work just fine. Though what are the groups that have permission on the folder in question? As for mySQL, it runs on the pool, but it does have issues moving the files around. "Oplock request denied" errors specifically. But that doesn't surprise me, as MySQL (and most databases) are fairly draconic about locking down their files. But it definitely does run. Though for the settings for mysql, make sure you use all the same slashs, and that the path ends with a slash as well. ("J:\ServerFolders\websites\wp-personal\MySQL\") Okay, doing a bit more digging, this is a weird issue with the permissions on the folder. I wasn't able to reproduce the issue on the root of the folder. But setting up a Server Folder definitely caused the same issue. And namely an "cannot write web.config" error. But the static page shows up fine (default.htm or index.htm). And even setting the permissions to match the root directory... it still won't write the config file (but it will in the root folder).

Also, what is the version number of StableBit Scanner that you are using?

You're welcome. As for the throughput, for non duplicated data, you're reading and writing straight to/from the disks. there is next to no overhead. And for duplicated file, it caches portions of the files in memory to help boost the speed, IIRC. So the performance should always be as good or better than the disks the data is residing on. As for the dashboard thing, if you're using WHS2011 there is that option. And doing that for 2.x may be something that may happen in the future. And I'm glad that you really do like the UI for DrivePool. Clean and simple was definitely the goal in mind. And yes, drag and drop works a lot faster. There are some advanced settings that may speed up the process, but drag and drop works the fastest.

IS the folder duplicated? If it is, that may be the issue. It's trying to write to both disks, but failing. If that is not the case (or if yo uwant to in general), could you enable tracing on DrivePool and reproduce the issue and report it to us? for DrivePool 1.x: http://wiki.covecube.com/StableBit_DrivePool_Log_Collection for DrivePool 2.x: http://wiki.covecube.com/StableBit_DrivePool_2.x_Log_Collection

It looks like you may have checked the "Add to a new pool" option. Just remove the disk from this "erroneous" pool, and then re-add it, but make sure the check box is NOT checked this time.

It looks like you need to enable "UnsafeDirectIo" for scanner: http://wiki.covecube.com/StableBit_Scanner_Advanced_Settings After doing that, you should see the SMART statistics. If not, let me know, and I'll post a link to my personal file and see if that works better.

Was DrivePool installed before or after the role was installed? If it was installed before, then try reinstalling it and see if that fixes the issue. If it was installed after and didn't create the dashboard tab, let us know. And thanks for spreading the word!

Just to confirm, this is Server 2012 R2 Standard with the "Windows Server Essentials Experience" role installed, correct? If so, then that is the issue. The method we use for detection ... well Microsoft moved the files around. They reside in C:\Windows\System32\Essentials when you install the role. But on 2012R2 Essentials, they appear in C:\Program Files\Windows Server\Bin (as per all previous versions). I've confirmed that this is an issue and have brought it to Alex's attention.

That may be true. But you should have "should" instead of would there.... Weirder things have happened.... As for the samsung drive, you could "remove" the disk after disconnecting it, and you would be fine. Well, it would remeasure and reduplicate as needed. Reconnecting it may "correct" the pool config though. As for the 255 character paths, I do believe it does support that just fine, but I'm not entirely sure.

Or at least with Archive Optimizer!

It also depends on how you've mirrored the disks. If you've done it on the controller, then you could add the disks, enable duplication, wait for that to finish, and then remove one array at a time, break it, re-add the disks, and repeat. (Or just leave the arrays in the pool). If you used Disk Management/dynamic disks.... we don't support those at the moment, so you'd need to clear those off (one "group" at a time), convert to "Basic" and then add to the pool.