Wiidesire

Is support even being active in this forum anymore? Been waiting for 8 months now.

You can take a look at old Disk and DiskID files under: C:\ProgramData\StableBit Scanner\Service\Store\Json Another option would be to right click on the drive, "Ping Disk" and then check which drive indicator on your NAS/DAS/enclosure/whatever lights up.

The loss of information after a crash/hard reset and sometimes even normal reboots has been fixed since version 2.5.4.3246. You're running an older affected version, consider upgrading to the newest stable one 2.5.6.3336.

I've renamed all my drives from the default names to a custom name. However any notifications I receive still use the default name: It would also be helpful if the notification would contain the location (case / drive bay) information.

That's quite "normal" that it happened in the upgrade process to 3246, see here: However now that you're on 3246 it shouldn't happen anymore. I assume some drives are partially scanned now? Reboot and it shouldn't be reset to 0% anymore.

The problem is that you were still on an affected version 3216. By upgrading to the newest version the Stablebit Scanner Service is forcefully shut down, thus the DiskId files can get corrupted in the upgrade process. Now that you are on version 3246 which fixed the problem it shouldn't happen anymore on your next upgrade/reboot/crash. I agree wholeheartedly though that we should get a way to backup the scan status of drives just in case. A scheduled automatic backup would be great. The files are extremely small and don't take a lot of space so don't see a reason not to implement it feature wise.

If you only have this problem with one single disk and not all of your disks, then you likely have a different problem. You could try backing up your settings and then starting from scratch (delete Json folder and restart) to rule out the previous versions having left over some weird issue.

Read here: tl;dr 3246 should fix any reboot scan status wipe

I've had it happen with normal reboots as well, just not as often as with crashes. It just depends on the timing. Imagine what happens on a reboot. Windows is forcefully shutting down services, including the Stablebit Scanner Service. So if this service gets shutdown at the timeframe where it is writing new DiskId files the files can end up corrupted, thus after a reboot the Service creates new DiskId files meaning all previous scan status is lost. Now the DiskId are not written literally every second anymore (which increases the risk that the service gets killed at the time of writing files significantly) but instead 20-40 minutes (don't know the exact interval now) . That's a reduction of a factor of 1200 to 2400 so the risk that you reboot at the exact time the files are written should basically be zero now.

The cause of the issue is fixed with Beta 3246. Since my machine is not frequently crashing, maybe once per month, it will take a while to verify it on my side.

To keep everyone up-to-date: With the help of Alex I've identified the root cause of the issue. The LastSeen variable inside the DiskId files is changed literally every second. This means that the DiskId files are constantly being changed and in the event of a crash there is a high chance that it crashes while the new file is being written thus the DiskId files get corrupted. The LastSmartUpdate variable inside the SmartPersistentInfo files is updated in a more reasonable one minute interval so I'm hoping it is a quick fix to simply adjust the write interval of the LastSeen variable. Besides changing the interval there would have to be backup diskid files to completely eliminate the issue. So instead of creating new DiskId files when corrupt files have been detected it should copy over an older backup file of the DiskId file(s) in question. Or the LastSeen value gets completely eliminated from the DiskId file and moved somewhere else to avoid changing the DiskId files at all.

I now have some more time and by chance Scanner lost all scan data again after a crash today. I've opened ticket 7381541 and attached the full Service folder to help troubleshoot.

I'm on this exact version and unfortunately this Wednesday after a reboot all my drive scan status is once again gone. So far it has happened eight times to me (over a year so on many different versions). I can tell because all the old json files are still there under C:\ProgramData\StableBit Scanner\Service\Store\Json. For whatever reason the drives get completely new ids thus losing all their status. Let me know what I can do to help troubleshoot this.

Thanks for the fast answer. It was an automatic surface scan. I never said it would get better. However I'm using Scanner precisely to keep track of the health status of my drives. Not getting Email notifications of the rising unreadable sectors is a serious issue. Drive hasn't got warranty anymore. I took the necessary precautions (backup) but the drive is still working fine. <50KB of unreadable data on a 6.000.000.000KB drive is not the biggest deal but if the unreadable count continously rises it becomes are a concern which is precisely why I need email notifications of it. Add it as a feature request please. So when I open the UI, go to the drive and S.M.A.R.T I can press "Ignore this warning" and the explanation says "Ignore the S.M.A.R.T attributes that are triggering the current warning". That does sound permanent to me. Can you confim that this only ignores e.g. 8 current pending sectors but once it rises I get another notification? For the "this harddrive is unable to read X sectors" in the UI, when I click it I can start a file scan but I don't see a way to dismiss it. I'm using v2.5.2.3129 btw.

I've been using Scanner for a while now and I've been very satisfied with its capabilites. During the usage of the product some questions came up so I wanted to finally ask them here. I currently got one drive with some unreadable sectors. It were only four, so no big deal. However when I went to check today it rose to nine sectors. However I didn't get any notification which is troublesome (I only got one for the initial bad sectors but I need notifications for subsequent ones as well). How can I turn on notifications when unreadable sectors are rising? Another problem is that I have no way to dismiss notifications of errors. They are persistently in the taskbar. When I click on them I can only choose "Never warn me about disks with unreadable data"and "Never warn me about S.M.A.R.T warnings/failures". But that's what I don't want. What I need is a "I acknowledge this warning but keep giving me notifications if error levels rise" button. Also is there a way to force StableBit to write over the bad sectors? The S.M.A.R.T data are showing a "current pending sector count" and if I understand this one correctly when I write over this pending sector it should reallocate this sector to a good one.

​It's too late now. It wouldn't matter anyway because in the default configuration DrivePool splits your media so much across the drives that it's way too time consuming to try to replace single files manually. I'm using DrivePool for the same reason (media library) as you so I can give you two critical tips to avoid this in the future: ​ ​1) Install the Ordered File Placement plugin from here. After that go to your pool options, activate the Ordered File Placement balancer and deactivate all others. Then prioritize your drives. This way when you add a TV show or a new season, it will all land on the same drive and will not be spread across the pool which is critical for a possible replacement unless you use capacity wasting duplication. Configurable ​Folder Split Levels would be an more ideal solution but the sole DrivePool developer "Alex" personally doesn't see the need for it -> low on priority list and will most likely never happen. ​2) Use the tool WinCatalog 2017 to keep track on what drive your media is. I'm very impressed with the tool so far. It not only archives the location and size of your files but also details like resolution/bitrate/audio tracks etc.

What risk? If implemented properly it will be optional. You don't need to use it. I don't need duplication and that code part alone makes DrivePool not as "simple and fast as possible". But I don't complain about it because I simply don't use it + I am not forced to use it.

Seems like you misunderstood me and took my quote out of context. The "I don't understand what's so difficult to get here" is a direct response to Alex's post "[...] but I personally, don't see a need for it. There will always be a need to split across folders even with a best-effort "grouping" algorithm". If you talk about this feature as much as you say, this is either a poor choice of words on his part or he doesn't get the Folder split level feature at all. Because in my opinion no, there is not always a need to split across folders. My use case with only the Ordered File Placement Plugin activated proofs it. And as I said he's the only developer, if he doesn't stand behind the feature or can't even grasp why it is needed, it's not high on the priority list. What I'm not saying is "this is so easy to implement, why hasn't it been done yet in all those 5 years?".

​ All Beta Builds: ​http://dl.covecube.com/DrivePoolWindows/beta/download/ ​Link from here.

I'd try updating to Beta 767 first. Your version is over 100 builds old.

I'm not looking for redundancy, simply for a way to group drives together to one big volume. What I like about DrivePool is that even if the software is discountinued or a hard drive fails, I still have a normal folder/file structure on each drive. I don't want any RAID because of the rebuild issues and because it's not a backup. I agree that it would take a lot of time but I also have a full backup on Amazon Cloud Drive Unlimited. With my 500 Mbit connection I can restore any lost media almost as fast as I can fill a new hard drive. I thought about that but I don't like such micromanagement. Simply dropping data into the pool is preferable for me. For now I can live with the Ordered File Placement plugin. I've disabled all other balancers.

​​ Thanks for the reply. Unfortunately Alex just responded today and he personally doesn't see any need for this feature. As the sole developer if he doesn't stand behind the feature, it's not high on the priority list. This is very disappointing. Here is the quote: "​Grouping files "together" has been requested a bunch, but I personally, don't see a need for it. There will always be a need to split across folders even with a best-effort "grouping" algorithm. The only foolproof way to protect yourself from file loss is file duplication." ​ ​I don't understand what's so difficult to get here. DrivePool makes a big volume out of many hard drives. I'd wager a majority use this software (in part) for an easy to manage media library. Why else would you have multiple Terabytes of data? For text documents? How is it not logical then to get folder split levels to make replacement easy after a hard drive fails? ​ It also doesn't make any sense to me to enable duplication for media that I physically own and can get back anytime by ripping the DVD/Blu-rays again. It is simply wasted hard drive space.

I can confirm this works, I'm running v 2.2.0.765. Before: After making the changes: Just to make sure, you've done more than one change? ​1. Set the "BitLocker_PoolPartUnlockDetect" setting to "False" ​2. Rename DrivePool.Service.exe.default.config to DrivePool.Service.exe.config ​3. Restart DrivePool Service or Reboot

​I agree that folder level splitting is a must-have. I'd really like to use folder split level 2 for media files. ​Fortunately for me I can live with the Ordered File placement plug-in for now. ​ The folder/file catalog should be built in, I agree. Thanks for the suggestion with WhereIsIt. I don't plan on using Duplication so I need to know which folders are on which drive in order to be able to rip the DVD/Blu-rays again when a hard drive fails. ​ ​I've only been using DrivePool since yesterday and these two points jumped out to me. I also agree on most of your other points but they haven't bothered me yet. ​

Thanks for pumping this thread, I've been using DrivePool since yesterday and my discs are being constantly accessed (my HDD enclosure has LEDs which show individual disc activity -> constant blinking with DrivePool). ​ ​Explanation: ​http://community.covecube.com/index.php?/topic/1784-drivepool-beta-constant-disk-activity/&do=findComment&comment=13602 ​ ​I'll try the fix tomorrow, hopefully it works.