Christopher (Drashna)

I agree, I don't think it was DrivePool.  I was able to restore from a backup.  I haven't updated to the RC again, but I will tomorrow.  I'm expecting it to upgrade with no issues.  I'm not sure what happened, but the system is back up at the moment and all is good.  If I have the same issue after I try upgrading tomorrow, I'll be sure to let everyone know.

Just be careful.  A low power CPU is, well ,low powered.  You may have issues with transcoding still.  Or multiple streams.
You'd want to direct stream, as much as possible. 

Okay, glad to hear it, then! 
 
I just wanted to make sure that you were aware of this beforehand.  it's easier to change specs before you buy and build the system! 

Good points but this CPU should be more than what I'll use it for.  khr2011 is showing stats for Emby and this CPU.  "I tried Emby with different videos on the same DS918+ and it transcodes 10bit 4k HEVC 60Mbps to 1080p h264 30Mbps perfectly with 25% processor usage"
https://forums.plex.tv/discussion/296528/ds418play-hardware-transcoding. 
It will mostly be a DLNA music server, file server and a backup end point with the occasional transcode of 1080p to our Ruko in the bedroom. .   The FireTV direct streams everything I have.  
 

Basically, this:
http://wiki.covecube.com/StableBit_DrivePool_F1655
It's meant to merge pools, but it would still work pretty much perfectly here.

You could probably just restart the "Windows Server Essentials Storage Manager" service, I think it was.  And this may fix the issue, without a full reboot.
So duplicated data on the 2x4TB drives, and unduplicated data on the 8TB?  If so, that's doable (via the "Drive Usage Limiter" balancer, "manage pool" -> balancing -> "balancers" tab). 
But keep in mind that we don't keep track of originals and duplicates, so "duplicated" is all data that is duplicated, aka both copies.  
Unduplicated data is any data that isn't duplicated.
 

For anyone reading this, Plex is smart enough if you move an existing Library file from Path A to Path B to realize you actually moved it, and that it's not a new duplicate. So while what @josefilion did worked, it really doesn't need to be done that complexly, or at one go. I recently moved from one huge folder with subfolders to one with A-C, B-D etc subfolders because it was taking Windows a long time to list the contents and I basicly just grabbed a few hundred folders at once with cut & paste to the new subfolders and me having "Detect changes" enabled in Plex made it pick up the moved files almost instantly.
So basicly: No need to turn off Plex. Just move your files how you want as long as they are not currently being played / scanned and you move them within the Library root folder.

I replaced crashplan with Spideroak. Cost is a bit more but I just pointed it at the folders in my Pool and it didn't duplicate or miss any data.  I have their 1Tb plan. 
I tried the service ice crashplan points you to but it was too restrictive. I created my own key with Spideroak and it just works.  

To chime in a little late, I wanted to convert to REFS.  Got half way through and found that when the power pops (kids running vacuum or something) - some of my drives turned RAW.  And it was nearly impossible getting any data from them.
I converted back to NTFS.  (There's a price of being an early adopter)

That's a personal opinion.
Mine is "no".  It's better to have duplication.  And backup. 
Duplication protects against drive failure, backup protects against deletion and loss.  The difference is that backups are incremental and don't contain all changes.
And recovery is MUCH easier with duplication.  
And as somebody that has lost a good number of drives... you may be able to get the data back, but doing so is a PAIN. 
 
In the immediate, no.  But as above ....
 

Perfect. I will check that out.

Happy New Year!
the i3 has a passmark of about 5000
that will do a one or possibly 2 transcodes - depending on what you are transcoding
for comparison my qnap 853a with a n3150 (passmark 1600) can barely do a 1080p transcode - so you need a passmark of 2000+ to transcode on the fly a H264 1080p file - for HVEC and larger frame size you will need more power.
Emby does have support for intel quicksync - although its still experimental - but does work - which can help to lower the load - the i3 will be better for this as well
I pre transcode my video's so the clients can play them natively so the server does not work that hard - in that case a celeron would do fine as a file server

I'm designing a replacement for my current server.  Goals are modest. Less heat and power draw than my existing server. Roles are  file server with drivepool, emby for media with very light encoding needs.  Local backups are with Macroum Reflect. Off site backups with Spideroak.  OS will be win 10 Pro. 
My current rig is here:  
New build:
PCPartPicker part list: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/yhdVqk
Price breakdown by merchant: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/yhdVqk/by_merchant/
Memory: Crucial - 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory  ($63.17 @ Amazon) 
Case: Fractal Design - Node 304 Mini ITX Tower Case  ($106.72 @ Newegg) 
Power Supply: EVGA - B3 450W 80+ Bronze Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply  ($53.73 @ Amazon) 
Operating System: Microsoft - Windows 10 Pro OEM 64-bit  ($139.99 @ Other World Computing) 
Other: ASRock Motherboard & CPU Combo Motherboards J3455B-ITX  ($73.93 @ Newegg) 
Total: $437.54
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2018-01-16 10:30 EST-0500
Storage:
LSI SAS 2 port HBA flashed to IT mode. 
Boot: PNY 120GB SSD
Data Pool: 4 x 2TB WD Red  
Backup Pool: 1x5TB Seagate (Shelled USB drive)
When this is built my old rig goes up for sale. 
My only thought is on the CPU. Could I go with a dual core Celeron for  about 80 bucks?  Will it handle a single encoding stream and not draw more power than the i3T? The Celeron will do fine as a file server. 

CloudDrive essentially cannot hit the API ban because of its implementation of exponential back-off. rClone used to hit the bans because it did not respect the back-off requests Google's servers were sending, though I think they've solved that problem at this point. In any case, don't worry about that with CloudDrive. The only "ban" you'll need to worry about is the ~750gb/day upload threshold. 

Surface scans are disabled for CloudDrive disks by default.  But file system scans are not (as they can be helpful)
You can disable this per disk, in the "Disk Settings" option.
As for the length, that depends on the disk.  aand no, there isn't really a way do speed this up.

If you double click on the drive, and open the "File system health" section, you can reset the status. Click on the button with the green circle to do this.
 
But this will cause it to rescan the drive, sooner or later (depending on the option you chose).

No, that's not normal.
 
And if you could upgrade to the latest beta, it may help with the shutdown issues. 
http://dl.covecube.com/CloudDriveWindows/beta/download/StableBit.CloudDrive_1.0.2.938_x64_BETA.exe

Chris,
I just updated to the latest beta...an UPLOAD ALL PAUSE feature!  I really slacked and did not send you my script!
This is going to make things so nice!  I'll add that into my script as the original way, I also validated settings of the performance window.
Using the new mechanism will be so much faster!  I check for color around the PAUSE button, if grey, paused, if white, not paused.  Loop.  So much easier than clicking buttons and looking around for a popup!  Now, if you have to move things, I only have to adjust 1 thing, VS every button location!  Same with color.  This might make this easy enough to just check the window size and calculate where the buttons are.  This would REALLY make this fancy!
This is great!

I have the MediaSonic 8-bay you mention, and the earlier 4-bay version of it. I initially tried USB 3.0 connections with it, but found the connection a bit unstable (random disconnect about once a week), but it's solid under eSATA. I do not know, but kind of suspect that the USB instability was partly me being a pretty early adopter in USB 3 land, and drivers and possibly USB hardware being less stable then. Another caveat with these enclosures, they do not support UASP, so you don't get optimal performance on USB 3. I believe driver and hardware support of USB 3 to be much more mature and reliable now then it was when I first tried 4-5 years ago.
I just purchased another 8-bay unit, but this time the StarTech equivalent (S358BU33ERM), otherwise mostly the same. It has a bit less manual options (fan speed, connection) but I don't really find that to be an issue. I'm going to give it a try USB 3 first, partly because this unit DOES support UASP (One of the main reasons I switched from the MediaSonic) so I should get better performance. So far it seems very reliable and performant, but if I encounter any hiccups I will just move it to eSATA as well.
 
 
 

Surface scans are disabled for CloudDrive disks by default.  But file system scans are not (as they can be helpful)
You can disable this per disk, in the "Disk Settings" option.
As for the length, that depends on the disk.  aand no, there isn't really a way do speed this up.

VERY IMPRESSED!
Didn't need to create an account and password Same activation code covers EVERY product on EVERY computer! Payment information remembered so additional licenses are purchased easily Nice bundle and multi-license discount I'm in love with the Drive Pool and Scanner.   Thanks for a great product and a great buying experience.
-Scott
 

Yeah, this entire issue is "complicated", to say the least.
But basically, at some point, StableBit Scanner is reading the flash drive, opening a "handle" to the drive. This "handle" is what locks the drive and prevents it from being ejected. 
However, not all drives are "equal", and there are 2-3 different kinds of flash drives, IIRC. And then USB "mass storage drives".
 
 

Yup, definitely. 
And yeah, depending on the device and driver, it *may* cause odd behavior, in rare cases. 
But if this is consistently still happening, let me know. 

Seriously, their only purpose is to create stones (and then pain), from what I can tell. 
 
 

Yes.
The cache size is what is stored locally. Setting that to "fixed" type would hard limit what was available locally. 
As for what size is ideal? That entirely depends on what you're doing.  The cache is adaptive, so it should attempt to keep frequently used data in the cache.  But if you're accessing different data frequently, then you would want a larger cache, to reduce bandwidth usage and API calls (eg, load). 
But it this is for media usage, then "more is better" definitely applies here.