Shane

Note: Just in case it needs to be mentioned, a drive is only a "backup" if the files on it are also somewhere else. If at any point you don't have a copy somewhere else, you don't have a backup. So as gtaus and Umfriend have said, the simplest way would be to use DrivePool's Remove feature. To speed that process up, since you intend to stop using DrivePool and want everything in your pool moved to a single drive, you could do the following: If there are any files/folders in the pool that you do NOT want to keep at all, consider deleting them first. There's no point having DrivePool waste time moving them to the last drive. Open up the Manage Pool -> Balancing menu. Settings tab, ensure "Balance immediately", "Allow balancing plug-ins to force immediate balancing" and (if present) "File placement rules respect real-time file placement limits set by the balancing plug-ins" are all ticked. Ensure that "Not more often than every:" and (if present) "Balancing plug-ins respect file placement rules" are NOT ticked. Balancers tab, untick all balancers except Drive Usage Limiter (and StableBit Scanner if present). In the Drive Usage Limiter balancer, untick all drives except the one you plan to keep. Click "Save". DrivePool should start moving all files on the pool to that drive. You can also manually force it, tell it to increase the priority of the balancing, or just go directly to the next step. Proceed to use the "Remove" feature to remove the other drives. Set up your Synology Diskstation with the removed drives (or whatever drives you're planning to use). Copy your files across from (the last drive in) the pool to your new Diskstation array. The above should stop DrivePool from continuing to balance your files across the remaining drives as you remove each one, instead placing them all directly on your chosen drive, while still allowing DrivePool to warn you if there are any problems with doing that. P.S. If you must for some reason bypass Drivepool, yes, you could cut and paste as you suggested, but read Umfriend's warning about that.

Yes, after reinstalling the OS and drivepool (in trial mode), and before it popped up the transfer request, I did change the computer name from the one Windows assigned.

Reinstalled my desktop PC over the weekend and of course reinstalled Drivepool; chose the Trial option with the plan being that I'd dig up and use my key once everything was running smoothly. Today when I booted up the PC, it said I needed to transfer my existing license to the new machine and wouldn't let me do anything with DP's GUI until I did. So I agreed... and it went through, and the GUI came back... yet it's still saying I've got 28.5 days left in the trial and giving me the option to activate my license. Bug?

I'd suggest Crashplan or similar local/cloud automatic backup software that supports email notifications ("computer xyz has not backed up in 2 weeks") and versioning ("family member deleted / saved over the wrong file" and "only realised a week later they needed the old file" situations).

Fast ring updates?

You might want to try new SATA cables anyway; they're cheap and while it's very rare they can still go bad. I'm under the impression that DrivePool's communication with the physical drives is strictly via the NTFS subsystem of the OS, thus its not going to cause SMART errors other than via wear (like any other app) because SMART operates at the hardware level. So your problems starting with a drive throwing up SMART errors is a bit of a sign. If you have spare SATA ports, try avoiding the port you had the faulty drive plugged into; if you have two SATA controllers on your board, try avoiding the controller you had the faulty drive plugged into. See if those make any difference. Has anything else updated recently - the VM software or the board drivers? And if you're running Windows 10 check if it's updated a driver behind your back, because that's something I've had to deal with repeatedly.

Yes, it is fair to assume that with global duplication enabled you can just pull the drive. If you want DrivePool to double-check, tell it to Remove the drive (tick both "Duplicate files later" and "Force damaged drive removal") first.

Very odd; DrivePool's default rule is to move/copy files to whichever drive(s) have the most free space, except as otherwise instructed by custom balance/placement rules. If you still can't remove the old drive via its button when you get back and can't find anything at fault in a custom rule, I'd suggest filing a support request via https://stablebit.com/Contact

1&2) when you remove a drive from a pool, it attempts to move all the files on that drive to the remaining drives in the pool. If there are no other drives left in the pool, it leaves the files intact, closes the pool and sets the normally hidden PoolPart folder - that contains all your files - visible. 3) not 100% sure what you're asking here. 4) You can use the Balancers and Placement rules (e.g. "keep anything in the Videos folder on local drive 1, local drive 2 and GSuite"). Otherwise, DrivePool will decide for you according to the Balancer rules: the default setting is to put new files on the drive(s) with the most free space. Note that if you want to have 4 local drives with x2 local duplication plus 1 cloud drive with everything duplicated to it too, you would need to set up as follows: * Pool Options > File Protection... > Pool File Duplication... > 3x Duplication (since you want two local copies plus one cloud copy) * Pool Options > Balancing... > Balancers > Drive Usage Limiter > Drive limit options > local drives only "Unduplicated" ticked and cloud drive only "Duplicated" ticked. This will should result in DrivePool keeping two duplication instances locally and one duplication instance on the cloud drive; because the File Protection rule is more important than the Drive Usage Limiter rule, the cloud drive gets a copy but DrivePool will still put the remaining two copies on the local drives. I have tested this myself, but you should test it yourself too. Also note that if you add another drive to the pool, you will have to update the Drive Usage Limiter rule to account for the new drive.

It almost sounds as if you're saying you're relying on the Balancer to remove the files from the old drive rather than using the Remove button? If you mean that the Remove process is still using the engine and thus being slowed that way - have you tried turning off Automatic balancing before starting the Removal process, ticking "Duplicate files later", and/or setting a global file replacement rule to prioritise the new drive above all others?

Your description reminds me of a file server where the fault was eventually traced to the hotswap rack the drives were kept in. Nothing showed up in event viewer (other than SMART reporting that yet another drive was dying) because the cause was below the OS level, and it killed several drives before everything else (including motherboard) was finally ruled out and the Rack Of Death was consigned to the trash. So if there's anything - and I mean anything - between your drives and the motherboard, consider it a possible suspect.

The DP config particulars can be found here: http://wiki.covecube.com/StableBit_DrivePool_Advanced_Settings Try setting FileDuplication_BackgroundIO to False but be aware this may cause some lag in other disk operations (so even if it works, you may want to change it back after it's done its job).

Indeed, the scenario you describe is one of the reasons why the mantra "RAID is not backup" exists. Q. Does DrivePool have a way of keeping track of what files are on what drive, so in the event of a failure, I could figure out which sets of files (or albums) were affected? Or do I need to be keeping track of that on my own? A. No - it does not maintain such a list. Yes - you would need your own method of keeping track.

Hi Woodie3, DrivePool does not currently feature limiting usage on a per-drive basis. I'd go ahead with partitioning.

Q: Can I copy a bunch of files directly to a poolpart folder on one drive and would DP do balancing _and_ duplication (if set)? A: Yes, although the balancing and duplication would only occur when DrivePool next performs its balancing and duplication consistency checks.