Christopher (Drashna)

I'm glad to hear it.
I wasn't sure if you had purchased StableBit Scanner already, so I wanted to make sure you were aware of the option.
And to set that information, you'll need to right click on a disk and select "Disk Settings". There are a number of other things you can set here, but the two options I'm talking about are at the bottom.

Yeah, currently StableBit DrivePool does not support adding networked locations to the Pool. Only physical disks. The except to this may be iSCSI, as these show up as physical disks to Windows, and therefor to us.
 
As for VMWare, if performance is important, then you will be better off with RAID, I think.

Fir the first, the part in parenthesis, I'm not sure what you mean here.
 
But DrivePool is entirely folder based duplication. And more or less "random" about where the files are placed.
As for controlling the location: http://community.covecube.com/index.php?/topic/208-stablebit-drivepool-controlling-folder-placement/
 
But in the meanwhile, you could set up two Pools. One on internal disks, and one on external USB drives. And then use Free File Sync, Always Sync or other such utilities to copy the files to the "external" pool.
 
Regards

I'm glad to hear it, and thank you for the kind words!
 
If you have any other issues or any questions, don't hesitate to ask.

This has renewed my faith in product support!
 
I disabled the ordered plugin, restarted the server and installed the new version of the plugin. I was able to add the drive and it's working perfectly!
 
This is fantastic! Thank you very much for your help! 

worked swimmingly.  had problems getting windows to see the drives in the 8 drive enclosure, but got that sorted.  installed drivepool and the pool came up quickly.
 
thanks all

Piotr,
 
Thanks for adding the files.
Alex should get to the file soon, and will let you know.
 
 
Worst case here, if you want to do reset DrivePool's settings:
http://wiki.covecube.com/StableBit_DrivePool_Q2299585B
Or do a clean install of DrivePool:
http://wiki.covecube.com/StableBit_DrivePool_Q3017479
 
These may help resolve the issue as well.

Sorry for the delay in reply. I've been out of town this weekend (well, just got back in last night)
 
As for your issue, that's very unusual, and definitely shouldn't be happening.
Thank you for the service dump. I've flagged it for Alex and he'll take a look at it.
 
In the meanwhile, could you get the error reports from the system as well?
http://wiki.covecube.com/StableBit_DrivePool_2.x_Error_Reports
 
As well as get the logs from "C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows Server\Logs". Specifically the "Dashboard" logs?
 
 
Additionally, have you tried the latest internal beta build? It may work better.
http://dl.covecube.com/DrivePoolWindows/beta/download/
 
IAR/bug: https://stablebit.com/Admin/IssueAnalysis/2159
(will be empty til Alex updates it.

Hi no problem just glad to help I got my card from xcase port multiplyer and a high point card from scan. Co.uk my setup is listed in the hardware section tho I have updated a few items it's basically the same I think in total useing a daisy change system I can connect upto 256 drives if I wish but I doubt I will ever need more than the 24 my storage array holds

That seems to have fixed it, thanks otispressly!
 
Been using DrivePool for about a year now and have had zero issues, love how easy it is to setup and maintain.

You definitely could.
Though I do beleive I'd had somebody with an issue with this card. I'm not 100% certain though.
 
Personally I have the "RocketRAID" version of this card:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816115111
You'd need to get breakout cables as well... such as these:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA00Z0TX9124
 
This is obviously a it more expensive, but it supports 8 drives instead. And may make cable management a bit cleaner.

I think the official answer is that as long as the count does not increase, you're probably OK. Now I have never had HDD issues until recently and in that short experience, once they arise, they rise in numbers.
 
I have had chkdsk /r and formating (not quick formatting) seamingly correct errors (according to Windos) but the next scan would show these again.
 
My policy now is, once I get them I may give them *one* more chance. Otherwise, my son and I love to tear them apart and play around with them. It's a bit of a thrill holding just the motor with the disks spinning at 7200RPM.

In part because it's a way to generate more interaction on the forum here, and because it's come up a few times...
 
A couple of pieces of software I highly recommend (well, aside from DrivePool and Scanner, that is):
 
Subsonic:
It's media streaming software. It has a "standalone" version and "WAR" version that you can install on your server (or desktop) so you can stream your music and video to the web. Or even to your mobile device. It works great with DrivePool, as well. It does require a yearly subscription for the video, and the app support, but it's dirt cheap.
Personally, I use a fork of it called "Madsonic", as it's much more actively developed (more than one update a year).  ESET:
I use this on all of my computers. I've been a long time supporter of the company and love their product. In fact, I have it installed  on my server (Server 2012 Essentials), though I am using the "ESET File Server" edition. It's cheap, and has all the features that you'd want for a file server. Otherwise, NOD32 works great on all desktop Windows versions, as well as Windows Home Server. 
Their licensing is also "version independent", so you can look for a cheap copy of an older version, and update to the newest version out. It is a good, cheap way to get multiple PCs protected. And it also uses Windows PE to create an offline scanner. Raxco Perfect DIsk:
While it may be debatable if defragmentation is needed... I've seen it greatly improve performance. Especially on WHSv1.  It's even SSD aware, and has it's own method for optimizing SSDs.  And personally, I find that the "Performance Aggressive" SMART Placement option does seem to help with performance.

180 degree turn from the power miser box you were using earlier.   You know you have a serious case when you need wheels to move it around. 

I tried it a MONTH ago. Locally, it works great (minus a hiccup every once in a while), but outside my network..... buffers every 5 minutes or so. Or just starts dropping frames like crazy. 
And I have decent upload (4mbps), so it shouldn't be an issue.

For those that are not as familiar with this topic or ... why you'd want to do this, let me quickly sum it up:
Control, speed, reliability. And Control.
 
I've been running pfSense for a while, as a custom router. Instead of a normal consumer router, such as a linksys or asus or belkin router. I've been happy because it gives me more options and more control over the network.
 
But between some performance issues with pfSense, and then it not booting back up... I've had to replace my router. I have a Linksys WRT610N v2.... but it's been less than stable. Wireless dies on it, and if I even try to enable QoS (Quality of Service, aka Traffic Shaping) or WMM (wireless QoS basically), it crashes my router. Hard. Every 10 minutes or so. 
 
So I did so looking and shopping. I found a very nice little box that is an Atom CPU, low powered, and supports 2 NICs. And I got a license from Sophos for Home/Free use. Installed it and set it up. Absolutely love it.
 
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16856205007
This is the box I got. IT doesn't come with RAM or drive, but I had both. 
And it idles at around 5-10% CPU usage.
 
If you're inclined on building your own router, then I highly recommend Sophos. It's a bit "draconian", but it has a great firewall built in. It also uses Squid I beleive to filter the traffic (and block things if needed), as well as to virus scan contents as you browse. Much like Untangle or pfSense. But it's all free, and requires a little more than a couple of clicks to setup.
 
For anyone interested, I've been writing about it here:
https://drashna.net/blog/2014/02/adventures-with-sophos/
 
 
 

@daveyboy37: Very, very well put!
 
@Umfriend:
And to each their own. But that is why we have a list of "extra" balancers, the framework for balancing, API for developing your own (if you're inclined), etc. If you're noticing a theme, "choice" is a big consideration for DrivePool, and we hope that it is appreciated.
 
And yes, Server 2012 allows for large backups. Specifically, the backup engine has always (well, the "Windows Backup" feature, not ntbackup) used VHDs for storing the backups. If you look it up, VHD's were limited to 2TB size, until Server 2012, which introduced the VHDX format which allows for a 64TiB per VHDX file.

Glad to hear it.
 
And yeah, I was going to recommend that file. As I know it works (the dropbox link is to my account)

I'm not sure what you mean by "over provisioning" here. 
(Specifically because all SSD over provisioning is usually done on the firmware level, and invisible to end users or even the system).
 
And yes, you could resize the partitions, and create a dedicated partition for a feeder disk.
 
However, I'd recommend a dedicated drive for the feeder disks. Why? To prevent sharing the IO with the system. As well, as prevent the system disk from getting "thrashed". It will receive a LOT of writes (depending on what you're doing), and may adversely affect the drive's life (SSD's life is very write dependent, though newer drives definitely last much longer). 
And if you're going to be using duplication, then ideally, you will want two disks.
 
 
As for if this "will be worth the trouble", are you doing a lot of writes? Such as a database on the Pool (like the Client Computer Backup database), or copying/moving files to the pool often? If speed isn't an issue, then this isn't worth it.
 
As for the disadvantages, I covered that already, above: wear and tear on the drives. Also, you'll want to dedicate a drive or two to this role. Which may or may not be pratical depending on your system.

Basically, yes.
 
However, any changes to the pool that you make will be picked up. That means files or duplicate status. 
 
 
That, and if the drives were already part of a pool on WHS2011, then when you install StableBit DrivePool on Windows 8, it will recognize the existing pool and recreate it.

Again this depends on organisation and on an individuals system and how they use it. I personally would never let the drives get to the position they would overflow. In my case Server 2012r2 and from past experience WHS2011 gives plenty of notice of such issues and thoughtful initial setup of the existing balancers will simply take care of the rest. The server backup on the operating systems mentioned are a pita to initially setup. You cannot just select which folders to back up. You have to browse to each individual serverpoolpart folder on each drive and select the relevant folders. With a 2 or 3 drive system that's no big deal but with 10-15 drives that's pretty time consuming. If music is scattered over a dozen drives and you miss selecting it on one of the drives backup will fail or at least be incomplete. Then it's back to all those drives to see what was missed. Mutiply that by the 10 or 15 different server folders and its a nightmare.  If my music is on two drives, then that's  two drives i need to check that it's being backed up properly.  
 
Having replaced the numerous 2TB drives with the 4TB ones I personally will have plenty of scope to add another 4TB drive as and when needed. The folder placement will simply be another option for those who feel they need it. 
 
Don't get me wrong. I am currently using two pools just to make sure all my flac files are duplicated but to be honest for me at least it just negates the benefit of having a pool in the first place. 
 
Anyway i'm glad you are starting to realise why limiting folder placement will be a massive benefit to some (if not all) of us. In years to come as your system grows you may also come to realise just how much of a benefit. Though hopefully you will never get as OCD as Drashna and myself.
 
Finally with regard to the drive failing, I actually see limiting placement as a good thing. My personal plan is to have all my "must not lose because i probably cannot replace data" duplicated over two drives. If one of those drives fails. My full data is still on the other drive. A much better scenario than a random drive failing and losing a couple of tracks off most if not every single album.

Yup, basically that easy.
 
ANd it won't recognize the "shares". you'd have to manually re-share the folders. But it will recognize the entire pool.
 
 
And yes, deactivate the license on the WHS system, and activate it on the Win8 box.

Yes I'm aware of the hard coded ram limit. My Gigabyte socket 775 motherboard only allows 4gb on the motherboard. I'm going to get a couple a couple of sticks of DDR2 ram to bump it up to 4gb. I'm running on a wolfdale 6300 core2 duo. its more than enough for my purposes. One of the things that held me back from upgrading was signed 64 bit drivers for my Supermicro AOC-SAT2-MV8 cards. I managed to find signed drivers. Sonnet has the drivers because they have a card that is based on the same chipset, and they loaded without a problem.
 
The server is up running and it appears stable. Drivepool is still doing its thing, but even with that going on I'm able access my ripped movies. Yes the wiki for WHS DE migration needs a little cleanup. ;-) I followed it but when I created the shares I was expecting to see the Poolpart.{xxxxxx}/serverfolder/sharedolder on each pooled drive which is what i was expecting to see. It was confusing to me, so I just moved the folders out of the DE folder into the poolpart folder on each drive. They immediately started to show up along with the shares I created. After that I moved them into the actual shares, then I deleted what was in the drivpool store folder and started the service to restart the duplication and verification processes.
 
It's all working very smoothly now, and I like the fact that I can have the backups in the pool and duplicated. WHS v1 was so finicky about its backups. :-)

I'm glad to hear that you're switching. I think you'll be very happy that you did. 
 
As for DrivePool v2.x, it lacks full dashboard integration, but it does create a tab in the dashboard from which you can administer the pool from. It's just not as integrated into the dashboard.
 
As for the Wireframes, we don't currently support that, but it's been requested in the past. We are considering it for the future though (no promises).
 
And as for removing disks, well, both DrivePool and Scanner identify the volumes mounts (drive letter or folder path), as well as the volume labels. If that's not good enough, if you have both installed, DrivePool will add the model and serial number for the disks to the tool-tips in the GUI.
 
 
 
Though, for ease of identifying disks, I would recommend mounting them to folder paths (such as "C:\DrivePool\i##" and "C:\DrivePool\e##"). 
http://wiki.covecube.com/StableBit_DrivePool_Q4822624

If you don't mind beta versions, Alex has added this to the newest built of DrivePool.
 
Wiki (DrivePool_CultureOverride): http://wiki.covecube.com/StableBit_DrivePool_2.X_Advanced_Settings#DrivePool   Download (450): http://dl.covecube.com/DrivePoolWindows/beta/download