Dane

Great, thanks for the reply.

First, I am not a Drivepool pro and this is just what I would do if I were in your position and cannot guarantee your data. First, is it the number of drive that can fit into the case or is it the number of SATA port you have available. If it is the number of SATA ports you could try getting a SATA card. You could also use the USB option you said you had. Attach a new 4TB drive by USB, add it to the pool, then remove one of the 3TB disks. Drivepool should move your files to the attached USB 4TB disk when you remove the 3TB disk in drive pool using the remove disk option(Will take a long time over USB). Then add another 4TB drive where the 3TB disk was once the files are moved off of it, add to the pool and remove another 3TB disk and repeat. When you have removed the last 3TB drive add the 4 TB disk that you have attached to USB into your server. If it is not automatically added back to the pool do it manually and your files should be all back. If anyone else here can verify that my suggestion would indeed work(or not) please speak up. edit Or, since drashna beat me by 2 minute, follow his suggestion lol

Sorry if this question has been asked but I couldn't find it. With Archive Optimizer when it is moving from feeder disks to archive disks does it do it as fast as the archive disks will allow or does it throttle itself to something lower? If not is there a way to tell it to only use say 25-50 MB/s? Reason I ask is I am doing a massive server upgrade and part of that upgrade is adding two ssd's as feeder disks. Hoping that when I am transferring large amounts of data to the pool that other things like plex isn't having to fight for access to the pool (all shows and movies are stored on it). This little issue brings the WAF (wife acceptance factor) way down. For some reason while watching movies or tv shows she doesn't like it constantly buffering because I am moving files to the pool. I know there is the option to have it only balance at a set time but, these are ssd's and I don't trust them enough to leave data on them for extended periods of time, but they are fast, low power, and relatively cheap.

I can only answer a couple of your questions but maybe that can be the start. You can have your entire pool show up under one drive letter or multiple, which ever you prefer. You can also have all your drives set with no letter assigned. I am trying to attach a screen shot so you can see my basic setup. As for drive size I do not believe there is a drive size limit besides what your computer is capable of . My current pool consists of 6 x 2TB WD Greens, and 5 x 3TB WD Reds. I have yet to try a 4 TB drive but is just a matter of time. As for transfer speed, it depends on file size and how many. If I am transferring a lot of small files rate drops to around 10-20 MB/sec. If it is say a bluray it starts off at around 100-110 MB/sec but stabilizes around 50-60MB/sec depending on what I am doing with the server at that time. For migrating your files I cant really help you out. I built a new...ish server when I migrated from windows home server v1 to the new server. So all I had to do was remove as many drives as I could add them to Drive Pool and transferred them across the network. When I was done I removed the last couple drives and added them to the pool as well. Hope this helped maybe just a little, I am sure someone with far more DP wisdom than I have can explain your migrating question for you. http://www.flickr.com/photos/98781816@N03/9266435741/ Drive S20 (G) in explorer is not part of the pool but it used to be lol

@drashna: Thanks, and the rack I actually got off kijiji (classifieds site) for 100.00 from someone that just needed it gone for renovations.

Updated to current specs, wife thinks it is a small upgrade...nope, huge one, to me anyways lol April 24 2014 (2012 R2 Hyper-V) Case: Chenbro RM31408 Modified to use standard atx power supply (tripple redundancy was nice but used 50 watts more power just for it) Motherboard: ASUS P8B-E/4L Z9PE-D16 (upgrade) CPU: Intel Xeon E3-1245v2 E5-2630v2 x 2 (upgrade) RAM: 32 64GB Kingston ECC Unbuffered (upgrade) OS Drive: 500GB WD Black VM Drives: 4 x 1TB WD RE4 in Raid 10 iCydock MB994SB-4SB-1 4 bay 2.5" raid cage (new) Drive Pool feeder drives: Kingston 120GB SSD x 2 (new) HBA: Onboard raid (2 Dell H310's on the way) (new) HBA & SAS Expander: LSI 9240-4i & Intel RES2SV240 SAS Expander (Link to Drive case) Case: Norco RPC-4220 (Drive case) DrivePool Drives: 6 x 2TB WD Green, 5 x WD 3TB Red Security Cam Drive: 1x 2TB WD Green (PVR Computer) Case: Rosewill RSV-R4000 Motherboard: ASUS P8H67M-LE CPU: Intel I7-3770K RAM: 8GB Kingston OS Drive: 500GB WD OS: Win7 Network Switches: HP Procurve 1800-24g (J9028B) x 2, 4 ports on each switch dedicated for a 4Gbit trunk between them (upgraded from single HP Procurve 1400-24g non-managed)