Christopher (Drashna)

Absolutely. There should be no issues with that.

Yup, true, you got me there. Free is a nice price. If you haven't purchased licenses already. PerfectDisk runs on my server already, and it set to SMART Placement (Performance Aggressive). And I just let it sit and do it's thing. Though, one thing I'm not seeing that Auslogic's Disk Defrag has is a "fragmentation shield". And what I mean by that, is a filter that prevents fragmentation of new files. And while that may be arguable useful... (but then again, people still argue the merrits of defragging in the first place)... Either way, it looks like a good product, and very fully featured. Something I would definitely recommend to friends for free defragmentation.

haha, No, this time I wasn't going to blame the drivers. But now that you've said something... That depends on the drives, in a large part. I've seen that behavior a LOT from WD Green drives. It's one of the reasons they're trash, and I highly recommend against never using them. And just to make sure, you'd doing this disk to disk? If so, it could be possible that you're saturating the BUS (or it's getting saturated enough that it's having issues). It could also be where on the drives the data is actually located (it could be taking longer to grab all the data), and this is why a lot of people recommend defragmentation tools. Or it could be a faulty cable... This is why I hate hardware issues, and it is why over at WGS, I have a nice LONG thread about performance issues. Running a check of the disks, running a defrag pass on them (check the offtopic "Software I recommend" thread), and stopping the Windows Search service (at least while moving files around). http://forum.wegotserved.com/index.php/topic/8335-before-you-post-media-stuttering-playback-issues-performance-irregularities/

Well, glad to hear that both things have helped out!

Yeah, that definitely sounds like a poorly written driver. Or at least poorly tested. Hopefully, you have no more issues!

No, Scanner, should have absolutely no issues with un-lettered volumes. And actually, running chkdsk normally scans the file system. The "/r" switch causes it to scan for bad sectors.

Well, unfortunately, I've seen similar issues (not with DrivePool, but with WHS) with a firewall installed. Even with it disabled, it can still cause issues.

Are you just using Windows Firewall? Any virus scanner on the server? And on the client? That and maybe restart the Windows Firewall service when this happens. Maybe it's just being childish and not letting go of packets... for a lack of a better description.

That hotfix *could* have corrupted the disk counters, which is what we read. That or the memory leak may be related to that issue. But either way, that's probably at least RELATED to the issue. And that should definitely fix the issue, if that's the case. Just make sure to reboot after running the command lines.

Well that's definitely an upgrade then. And if the card is a SIIG or a SYBA or similar brand, then yes, it's probably a Marvell chipset. Though if you really want to find out, you may be able to identify it by the Hardware ID for the controller in device manager.

Try unchecking "unduplicated" files in the "Disk Space Equalizer" options, or just out right disable that balancer and see if that helps. And as to why, is that the balancers are checked in order listed. But there could be weird interaction between the two balancers. Disabling one should indicate if there is a conflict.

You could manually do a check of the file system by running "chkdsk" on that volume/partition. Aside from that, marking the drive as unchecked should do that normally. If you have it set to scan automatically, you shouldn't need to do anything else. Otherwise, you'd want to manually start a scan.

My guess is that you are having an issue with the performance counters with Windows. Could you try this and see if it fixes the issue? http://wiki.covecube.com/StableBit_DrivePool_Q2150495 And if this is the issue, there has been a rash of this issue going around. Though, your case would be the first one in while though.

To be blunt, PerfectDisk and DisKeeper can do the same. And at one point, both had WHS versions. I'm not sure if they do anymore. But, IIRC, PerfectDisk ignores the DrivePool disk anyways. But like a lot of programs, preference is a big thing.

Well, 9 times out of 10, resetting the settings fixes the issues. I ask for the logs first, so Alex can take a look at them and see what may be causing the issues. Worst case, just zip up the logs, and reset the settings and see if that helps. If it doesn't, then submit them when you get a chance.

Yes, it definitely supports removing the key. However, if you need to reboot remotely... you'd be SOL without it. I'm not sure about faster, as I haven't really tested out speeds, but I know that BitLocker is a lot more integrated and seamless. And yeah, motherboards with TPM modules are becoming a lot more common from what I've seen.

From the looks of it, it may be because you don't have enough free space on the other drives, so it's falling back on that disk. Which would be the normal behavior.

Could you check to see if you have any error reports? If you do, could you upload them? http://wiki.covecube.com/StableBit_DrivePool_Error_Reports Also, after doing that, try resetting DrivePool's settings? http://wiki.covecube.com/StableBit_DrivePool_Q2299585

Try the SATARAID5 drivers. You may get better performance out of the card. If they don't work, try the other. Also, check the BIOS version for the card. The most up to date one is from 9/9/2009, and version 7.7.03. And I'd recommend the RAID version of the BIOS. It may also work better. And to be blunt, Silicon Image chipsets tend to be very flaky. I'd recommend selling that one and getting something else. Like this: http://community.covecube.com/index.php?/topic/46-siig-sc-sa0m11-s1-pci-express-20-low-profile-ready-sata-iii-60gbs-2-port-controller-card/

Well, that's one way to solve the problem. Well, glad that the new card works better. If you don't mind me asking, which card did you end up going with?

That's based on a lot of feedback/troubleshooting. For those that aren't familiar with me, I'm a very active member of the Windows Home Server community, and those drives are pretty well hated just because of how problematic they are.

Not yet. I guess I know what I'm doing over the weekend. And as long as it has Windows Server support, it should work on WHS just fine. Otherwise...

I will second that observation. I had a couple 2TB WD Green's, and they basically had all the same issues you've described. It's why I always recommend against them. Reds are better, in fact. They're meant for NAS storage, but basically, they're just Green's with all of the issues fixed.

Glad to hear it. And yes, the SYSTEM "account" is the one account that is *REALLY* important. Not only does Windows use it for most of it's built in stuff (like chkdsk, or lets say, the client backup service for WHS), but it's also the account we use for our services. That means if the SYSTEM account doesn't have access, then we can't duplicate or balance the files. Oh, and NTFS Permissions can definitely be confusing and irritating. That's why the WHS dashboard does all of that stuff for you. Otherwise, it can be a real nightmare to do yourself! As you've seen.

It sounds like you may have removed or altered the "SYSTEM" permissions. This account need to have FULL access for DrivePool to work properly. Make sure it's set that way, and then retry. If that doesn't help, you man need to reset the permissions on the pool: http://wiki.covecube.com/StableBit_DrivePool_Utilities