Christopher (Drashna)

...to the Stablebit team. Recently discovered DrivePool and Scanner, and it's basically solved all my storage problems in one go. I had my disks in RAID arrays (RAID 0+1), which was a costly way of doing things! I have two main PCs - an HTPC and my personal one. I got the DrivePool+Scanner combo for both after testing DrivePool for the trial period on my virtual machine box (a ProxMox 3.3 machine).
I have lots of unused 320GB, 500GB drives that just aren't suitable for RAID (size mismatch, manufacturer, speed etc), and DrivePool is going to make them usable!
 
Now looking to put together a new build using DrivePool to fit more drives in to my media server. Currently got 3x4TB drives in the HTPC (was 2 in RAID mirror), but no room for more so it's got to move as my media collection seems to be growing exponentially, thanks to my GoPro and storing my Blurays as straight copy MKVs at 24-40GB per movie. Looking around at various hardware before committing to a case. But it will be such a money saver being able to slot in any HDD I have going spare when I need a bit more space.
 
So a big thank you for you guys - you've made things so much easier and I can concentrate on the hardware I want rather than worry about how to manage the data security. Already got a friend to buy the combo too, and he's just as pleased after struggling with storage solutions - especially having recently lost a 2TB drive that wasn't duplicated... ouch.
 
 

Ah yes, as an OS drive, it may well do horrible. So that leaves defragmentation and temp storage. But defrag is something that should be doable in the background, suspending in case of real I/O, I guess the FW may also do something while idle, a bit like TRIM on SSDs. E.g. writing new data to clean bundles of tracks and then re-organising when idle. Anyway, one I finally get them I'll see (and tell) how well they do as backup drives.

not missing your other points but he said other than for databases.     I'm hopeful though that a media server will be not so write intensive to be a big deal but i got my 2nd paycheck today so have ordered the parts for this server will try the 8tb in a future expansion perhaps but for now i'm happy.  i had a few more family members say they would want access to the plex server so i went ahead and got an i5-4590.  my father decided that since a few family members wanted access he would pay the difference to upgrade it so it could handle an additional transcode or 2

This is an issue with the Windows Home server installer.... It fails to roll back properly when there is an issue (at least in the dashboard).
 
Please uninstall the Add-In, and then reinstall it. This will ensure you're on the proper version (you're stuck on 2.4 right now).
If needed, uninstall it from the control panel first, then uninstall it from the Add-Ins section in the dashboard.

getting xeon 1246v3, Gigabyte GA-Z97MX Gaming 5 micro atx mobo, 3 4way startech power splitters for sata power, 1 artic silver 5 thermal compound, 1 aric silver articlean thermal material remover and surface purifier, 1 set Gskill Trident 2x8GB ddr 3 1600 ram..1 WD 6TB hard drive.
 
with 3 day ship and rush processing should have it by Wednesday or Thursday... cant wait...

duelistjp, those 8TB seagates are not called "Archive" for nothing. The thing with these is that re-writing a sector may cause more sectors to have to be re-written. That's due to the SMR tech in these. I will get 2 soon but I intend to use those as backup drives, not actual server storage. On the other hand, the data on my server is mostly static anyway so it could well do the job. I'd just hate to have, say, a larger database on those.

Well, I'm sorry to hear about the power outage and the other issues....
 
BUt i'm glad to hear that the new installation seems to be working fine though!
 
As for reinstalling.... if Windows 10 system has the "create system image" option, you could use that. It would give you a clean point to restore to if something goes wrong.

If you have your drives mapped with drive letters you can run the following script (say daily) to have it generate a file list per drive and place in DropBox:
 
@echo off set dropbox=C:\Users\SomeUser\Dropbox\DrivePoolContent\ for %%i in (C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z) DO (   if exist %%i: (     dir %%i:\ /ahs /s /b  > "%dropbox%\FileList_%%i.txt" 2> nul   ) )   If you don't want to assign driveletters you can also mount all your disks under a single mount point instead of drive letters (say C:\PoolDisks\) and just dir that folder.

I've been waiting patiently for Filesafe.  If anything happens to my family photos, I'm afraid of what my wife may do to me.  But I'm sure you guys will hear about it in the news. 

Since you asked, I'll add to the thread even though it is not a rack mount system. 
 
Case - Rosewill Blackbone - http://www.amazon.com/Rosewill-Steel-Plastic-Computer-Blackbone/dp/B004A9XB6W
PSU - Seasonic 80+ Platinum 460w, fanless (I wanted as low power use as I could get)
CPU - AMD Athlon II X4 610e, 45w TPD  Had to upgrade last week, now is a Phenom II X6 1090T, more on that at the end of post.
Cooler - I don't remember, I built this thing several years ago. It's huge and the giant fan is quiet.
Memory - 8GB (I don't really care about brands, it's Corsair though I think)
OS - WHS 2011
NICs - using an Intel Pro gigabit for the network, onboard Realtek gigabit for video cameras
Drives:
1x Hitachi 500GB boot drive
1x WDS WD5000AAKS - boot backup drive, and yes it's PATA
2x Samsung ST32000542AS 2GB
1x WD WD30EZRX 3GB (Yes, that's a green drive, and it's been solid as a rock)
1X ST3000DM001 3GB (yes it's been replaced once)
 
No, it's nothing special, but it works for what I'm running on it.
MediaBrowser Server 3
BlueIris 4 controlling 8 3MP cameras
Plex
Subsonic Server
SabNZB
SickRage
CouchPotato
 
And of course, DrivePool and Stablebit Scanner.
 
BlueIris is quite the processor hog, even with everything optimized to be as efficient as possible. I was having some CPU overload issues when SabNZB went to unpack files, so I upgraded the processor.
 
My plan in the near future is to build a second server, run ESXi, and start working with some of the open source data center tools. I have a long IT background, but moved into IT security audit about 3.5 years ago. My home stuff is the only thing that keeps me hands-on current. This server will get the 610e back, remain my disk space server, and will most likely keep BlueIris until I add so many cameras that it can't keep up. 
 
New server is going to be an i7 4790 based system on an ASRock Z87 Extreme6 board. Gobs of memory, ESXi, and solid state drive.
 
I won't go into all the network gear, but it is all enterprise stuff - lots of APs (long 1954 ranch style house dictates it), Juniper gear throughout, etc. Cameras and some of the APs are PoE, you get the idea.

Just to chime in on my own opinion of which version to use with WHS 2011.  I started with V1 and moved to V2.  From my perspective, V2 is the right choice.  
 
1) I like the V2 remote view/control scheme much better.  The WHS Dashboard is soooo sloooow to load whereas the V2 remote app for DP is super fast.  
2) I like being able to place certain files on a specific drive (I put my VM images on a very fast drive, for example)
3) I have yet to see any benefit of the tighter integration from V1 vs V2.  
 
So no downside with V2 over V1, and several areas of upside.  Frankly, I am surprised to see Covecube still supporting a separate product for WHS.  IMHO, V1 is really not needed.  

bobbyc,
 
This is why we generally recommend manually changing the drive letter to something not commonly used.
For instance, Y:\ or B:\. Neither of these are used often and should be available. In fact, Windows should never attempt to use B:\ normally, so it's a great letter for DrivePool.

pool is fixed I had to delete all data and recreate pool after a format with zeros with wd diag but I think it was more data corruption than anything else ill transfer data back to pool tomorrow


still gonna look at getting a new hdd or 2 for the pool but that scared me


thank god for external backup

Ah, okay. Then yeah, that's probably not a good thing then.
 
As for why the WD tool gave the drive an "all clear" ... some SMART values are marked as "pre failure", meaning that they're "more important. Also, there is a threshold value on most drives. If the value isn't marked as pre-failure (and I don't think it is), and it's not above the threshold, the drive may not be flagged as bad by the manufacturer's utilities. 
 
But if StableBit Scanner is running into bad sectors as well... then definitely a good idea to replace it.

Agreed but I am trying to avoid an Intel vs AMD fanboyz debate. Let's just say the A10 do well for a Server? I used to be an AMD fanboy and LOLled at the Pentium 4s and their heat issues. But Intel has come a long long way since then and well, I changed sides and will remain here until a better product comes along.

Lol the old Intel vs AMD debate not even going to get started on that one my own personal preference is AMD but that's my preference. My Input on this conversation was simply that I use the APU and my particular system runs without any problems I can stream 1080p to 7 rooms, play music and download torrents as well transfer data between computers at the same time without any problems but then again I also use WD greens which people say are rubbish but  all 20 of mine have been fine some are even reaching the 4 year old mark so all I can say do your research and choose what you can afford.

Disconnect the pooled drives. All of them.
 
This (hopefully) should let you boot into the system without running the disk check.
Once it's done that, use the "show disconnected devices" "feature" (?).
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/315539
 
Open up Device Manager (run "devmgmt.msc") and find the "Covecube Virtual Disk" drive. (Should be under "disk drives"). Right click on it and select "Uninstall". DO NOT select the "delete drive files" option.
 
Reconnect the disks and reboot the system.
 
 
 
If this doesn't help, unseed the pool (on another system).
To "unseed" it, basically move the contents of the hidden "PoolPart" folders on each disk to the root of the disk. Then delete the now empty PoolPart folders.
Reconnect these folders to the system, and boot up. Then "seed" the pool.
http://wiki.covecube.com/StableBit_DrivePool_Q4142489

I'll see about getting the upload limit increased (or feel free to use dropbox or the like and link the image).
 
Not sure what to tell you. If it comes back, let me know. But hopefully, it stays working properly.
 
Also, just to make sure here: the client back up is a single instance storage engine. That means that additional backups don't take up additional space.

I've been saying for years now that everyone should have a personal copy of the interweb.

my plan is for my 1 120gb ssd 1 wd red 2.5 1TB 1 slot load dvd writer and 12 6TB wd red (2 of wich will replace my 1 TB black and my 1 TB green) for a current grand total of 120gb os drive and a 61TB data pool


until larger drives come out

That's still twice as many HDDs as Ryo was planning to use but I see your point. Max power per rail is something that is overlooked easily, in this case by me perhaps and, yeah, peace of mind is worth a lot.
 
I was still looking at Ryou running 3x1TB and missed that he was planning on 12.

Interesting... Success!!!!
 
So I tried the first of the two provided methods, and at least DrivePool identifies the two missing disks. Awesome! Then, I re-added them and the pool re-measures. The correct volume size was then listed (17.8TB). The unfortunate bit was that all data listed on the SSD's was listed as "Other" data. That sucked, because I know some of that data isn't being listed in the pool exists in that "Other" data.
 
I then mounted one of the previously missing disks as a drive letter and browsed the PoolPart folder (as suggested in the latter aforementioned steps). BEHOLD! My data! Curiously though, there were TWO PoolPart folders. I'm certain this happened when they became disconnected, then re-added to the pool.
 
So, just to be safe, since I knew all my data was in-tact I figured I'd give your second process a go. After a few tedious bits I recreated the pool and everything is back up and working normally. YAY!
 
Drashna, you are my hero of the day, once again!

FCOL, a 1200W PSU? Get some splitters! Them's to be used with like dual X295 AMD cards having a TDP of 500W and a 150W CPU or something. I wonder what kind of efficiency they reach when you're actually drawing like 120W (10%)?
 
On the other hand, what's another 170 bucks...

Yo Ryo, there's an old saying, Poop, or get off the pot.  Go get your SSD, and get it going already. You're over thinking this,    Forgot my wink.

I'd be careful going with any of the current 2.5" drives geared for laptops, excluding the 2.5 WD red, many if not all of them have head parking issues which plays into the systems time out/sleep features and saves battery life for laptops. I was going to go with a 2.5" black, but I found mixed reviews, some complained about the head parking, while others did not, so I went with a SSD.   The issue with the head parking is that drives have so many load cycle counts before the drive starts throwing smart errors when you hit the max.  I have a couple 2.5 HGST drives, that i use a program to write data to them every 8 seconds which keeps the heads from parking.  
 
 there's no reason to go mechanical at this point for the OS drive, SSD's are too cheap.  Use the built in windows utility to back UP the os drive, and forget about.