Shane
-
Posts
756 -
Joined
-
Last visited
-
Days Won
70
Posts posted by Shane
-
-
Only on the drives that make up the pool.
-
Perhaps options in the Throttling menu?
-
I'm stumped. There's just been a new stable release (2.2.4.1162) of DrivePool; if that doesn't fix it, might be worth opening a Support ticket as something's going on that literally doesn't add up.
-
Hmm. Might be a file/NTFS permissions issue. Try a utility called TreeSize Free as administrator? It lacks the shiny pincushion map, but it handles permissions a bit better and might help you track down the file(s) so you can check that.
Edit: might also want to run a chkdsk on the drive.
-
You could try resetting DrivePool via the cog icon, Troubleshooting -> Reset all settings...
Also, if you're on Windows 10 that recently updated to build 2004, check that you are running the latest stable release of DrivePool. It should be version 2.2.3.1019.
-
1. Are the drives that you used to form the pool still showing up in Windows Explorer / Disk Management?
2. When entering the activation ID, did you include the curly braces {} ? Though even in trial mode, your pool should still be visible.
-
That's not expected behaviour.
-
Yeah, it shouldn't be doing that. Are D: and G: drives used for any non-pool files?
Maybe take a look at D: and G: drives with a program like WinDirStat (running as administrator, with Show Free Space and Show Unknown checked in Options)?
-
Are you saying that the pools are showing up in DrivePool but not in Explorer? Can you provide a screenshot showing the problem?
-
It should be possible to write a balancer that controls real time file placement, since that's what the SSD Optimizer and the Ordered File Placement balancer plugins do.
DP defaults to writing to the disk with the most free space in bytes rather than by percentage to minimize the possibility of running out of space on the destination disk during writing, because it is not possible to guarantee the size of the write in advance (for example, a 1 TB GB disk with 10% free space has only a fifth of the space available of a 10 TB disk with 5% free space).
-
I'm kind of following, I think... what would your preferred strategy be? (for example, "I want new files to go to X, then Y, then Z.... and I want it to balance old files at 1am to Y, Z and J so X is freed up again.")
-
There shouldn't be any corrupted files, as DrivePool does not "split" a file across drives.
If duplication was enabled for any files that might have been on that drive, you shouldn't have lost any files. DrivePool will automatically re-duplicate those files given enough free space in the pool.
If duplication was NOT enabled for any files that were on that drive... the short answer is "not via DrivePool". DrivePool doesn't keep a database of your files. You would have to compare your pool against your own backups (if any).
If you "quick"-formatted your drive (and have not re-used that drive since then) there are third-party tools that can (attempt to) "unformat" it. However, this can also result in files that you deliberately deleted also being restored, which may be a factor in whether or not you want to do this.
-
I've suggested being able to prioritise reading from SSDs to Stablebit. It seems like it could be a useful feature if it's feasible to implement.
-
1. Add the replacement drive to the pool then tell DrivePool to remove the faulty drive from the pool. If you can't or don't want to wait for the replacement drive then you can tell DrivePool to remove the faulty drive from the pool immediately; if there's enough free space on the remaining drives it will move the files to the other drives. Either way, once you've done that, you may want to compare your pool against your backup to check that no files were damaged by the faulty drive. Note that if you have Stablebit Scanner, then DrivePool can be set to automatically evacuate a drive that Scanner detects is failing (useful if a drive decides to start dying just after you've gone to work, sleep, whatever).
2. Yes. Plug in the USB disks and create a pool that contains only those disks. The pool will only appear when one or more of those disks are plugged in. Caveat: keep in mind that if you don't (dis)connect all of the disks simultaneously, that pool will be set read-only until all of the disks are connected and DrivePool will want to verify the pool (which can take a long time if you have a lot of files) once all the disks are reconnected. You may want to temporarily stop the "StableBit DrivePool Service" service while you are (dis)connecting the disks to avoid this:
- stop DP service
- (dis)connect all of the disks in the pool from the computer
- start DP service
-
Missing disk notifications should show up in the daily service logs, "%PROGRAMDATA%\StableBit DrivePool\Service\Logs\Service" folder.
E.g. you could search the logs for "Lost existing pool part" and then look at the identifying string (e.g. 26C04868...) to find the disk containing that poolpart.
You can also view the last ??? minutes of the current day's log via DrivePool's {Cog icon} > Troubleshooting > Service Log menu option if you want to watch its activity in real time, and you can also use that to modify its tracing levels (none/errors/warnings/information/verbose) for various areas.
For example manually disabling a disk via Disk Management displays this in the Service Log view (in the Service Log files it is formatted differently):
11:46:51.1: Warning: 0 : [PoolPartUpdates] Lost existing pool part 26C04868-CC94-4051-B68A-B9ABB6B16E5B (isCloudDrive=False, isOtherPool=False)
You can also get DrivePool to email you about any missing disks: {Cog icon} > Notifications > Notify On Missing Disk (checked) and Notify By Email (filled with your email address). It should contain a description of the missing disk (volume label and drive letter, or model and serial).
For seeing what files are open, I sometimes use OpenedFilesView (freeware from nirsoft.net). In this case with View > Use Quick Filter enabled, "poolpart" as the search string (without the quotes). You can either manually refresh or you can use the Auto Refresh under options if you want it to monitor changes.
If the Process Name is "System Process" then it's Windows or a driver, if it's "svchost.exe" then it's a Service (probably also a Windows one but may be something else).
-
I'm not aware of any controls for specifying which drive(s) a pool should prefer for reading files. However, do you see any favorable difference if the Manage Pool > Performance > Read Striping menu option is turned off (it's enabled by default, and will thus be trying to read from both drives for any file above a certain size that is on both drives)?
-
I'd consider that to be normal and expected; user345678 is correct that DrivePool's features require processing time. It's just more noticeable with SSDs because they're so much quicker than HDDs, and read striping doesn't work well (or at all) with small files.
But as Christopher pointed out, increasing performance isn't what DrivePool was really designed for (edit: IMO it's impressive how well it manages to avoid the opposite happening).
-
Disclaimer: Not a DrivePool dev.
@AlanO I suspect the problem with "identifying the size of the file being transferred" is that DrivePool presents itself as a standard NTFS-formatted single-volume drive to the Windows file system interface, which (I presume) means it has to deal with the fact that Windows expects to be able to create files of undefined length whenever it wants.
TLDR while Windows may first ask "how much free space do you have", when it goes "I'm going to start writing a file, I'll tell you when I'm done" then the only choice a NTFS drive - physical or virtual - has is to go "yes boss, I'll tell you if I run into any problems". The drive does not get to ask questions.
-
Glad to hear you've been able to recover (most of) the data so far. From past and painful experience I would not buy "external USB" HDD for any long-term use let alone storage; would rather buy a bare HDD and a decent enclosure separately.
If you're looking for new drives, you might find this article of interest: https://www.anandtech.com/show/12075/best-consumer-hdds - it also compares enterprise tier drives.
Possibly you might also be interested in the Data Hoarder subforum on reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/ - quite a busy place.
I looked at using Blu-Ray instead of DVD or HDD but if you go that route make sure you don't get any discs that mention LTH - that's organic dye and you do not want that for archiving. Also not to be confused with HTL which is non-organic and is apparently 25+ years if done right.
Honestly I think your plan of "planned HDD replacement" is probably the best KISS approach for a small number of drives. Since you mentioned using pairs of drives I'd suggest each drive being same size but a different brand (e.g. one brand X + one brand Y).
-
I'm hoping for another remote session. After further reading I suspect the (main) issue may be the use of SMR drives (horribly slow during long sequential writes involving used sectors) but I'd like to confirm exactly what's going on. And if we seed the pool at least we can work around that problem for the time being.
-
That... looks like a .NET framework issue? In order I would try:
- uninstalling DrivePool
- checking Windows Update for any .NET related updates
- running Microsoft's .NET Framework repair tool
- running Microsoft's system file checker (from command prompt, sfc /scannow)
- reinstalling DrivePool
If that doesn't help, I would consider opening a Support ticket.
-
If you've got time now, I can help you out via remote support (I'm on lunch break). I'll message you a link.
-
It looks like you've got only one physical disk currently in your pool? Are you "moving" your files from a folder on that physical disk to a folder in your pool?
If so that'll lead to Windows not realising it's still the same drive "physically" and it'll be bottlenecking itself by doing copy-delete-copy-delete-copy-delete when it could just be doing move-move-move...
Just saw your latest post as I was typing the above; looks like that's what's happening? There's a MUCH faster way if so...
-
A properly manufactured HDD should not degrade in that short a time if kept well (e.g. dry, cool, dark). However, the magnetic patterns that store the data do slowly decay - whether the drive is in use or in storage - so good practice is to "refresh" hard drives every two or three years (i.e. check & re-write the contents). So your idea works well in that regard.
You might also wish to look at MultiPar which can create parity files that can be used to check and repair file damage of individual files/folders, and SnapRAID which does the same thing for entire/multiple drives - I know some DrivePool users rely on the latter for guarding their pools against "bit rot".
How to locate file location on specific HDD in DrivePool?
in General
Posted
I'd suggest a tool called Everything, by Voidtools. It'll scan the disks (defaults to all NTFS volumes) then just type in a string (e.g. "exam 2020" or ".od3") and it shows all files (you can also set it to search folder names as well) that have that string in the name, with the complete path. Also useful for "I can't remember what I called that file or where I saved it, but I know I saved it on the 15th..." problems.