Shane

1. I think in this case it comes down to your own personal preferences. 2. Personally I wouldn't (the VMs I have in my pool are kept in a folder set to zero duplication), but if I did I'd definitely test it thoroughly before committing to it. 3. The current version of DP should detect dedupe automatically, but to make sure check that "Bypass file system filters" is absent or at least unticked as a per-pool option under "Manage Pool -> Performance". As I understand it however, dedupe will still be per physical volume so you might not see much benefit? - 3.1 ... maybe? You'll need to investigate whether a custom File Placement rule could provide what you're wanting. 4. Can't answer this one, depends how well CrashPlan plays with virtual drives? - 4.1 Yeah, I don't think VSS would work. - 4.2 Unless you did that, of course. 5. Given your setup, you might consider using mirrors for duplication and drivepool for pooling your mirrors? - 5.1 as I understand it, DP has its own internal support for long path, so - at least as far as the physical *:\PoolPart.* folders storing the pooled data are concerned - you should only have to worry if you have programs/processes that are bypassing DrivePool to talk to the physical drive(s) directly. Windows may of course still run into problems if P:\* itself (where P is your virtual pool drive letter) is longer than 256 characters.

As Umfriend says, adding a drive to the pool doesn't add any files that are already on that drive to the pool - those files stay where they are. You can do the seeding Umfriend describes or you can simply "cut and paste" them from the physical drive to the pool drive (less work for you, more work for your drives, and requires enough "free" space on the pool). Either way just be sure you don't copy any PoolPart.* folders from the physical drive into the pool.

Hi Michael. My guess would be a latency hit from the hub itself (due to the nature of USB). You might want to check by seeing how much difference there is between copying the same large set of small files between (1) the PC's internal drive to a pool/icybox, (2) that pool/icybox to a different pool/icybox, (3) the different pool/icybox back to the PC's internal drive (in that order to control for any caching). You also might want to test this with real-time duplication turned off to see if that makes any difference.

Hi Dennis. Basically yes, wherever the folder structure is the same in each hidden PoolPart.guid folder on each of the pooled drives then DrivePool will treat the files within those folders as being in the "same" folders; if any given "same" folder on multiple drives contains identical files then those files are considered duplicates (and DP will check them for consistency). You can use this to "seed" a pool as described here if you understand what you're doing. Alternatively, if you don't mind leaving DP to do all the hard work - and if DriveBender and DrivePool can run without conflict on the same computer (personally I'd test that on a spare PC with a couple of spare drives first) - you could simply add the same physical drives that you've already used to form the virtual DB drive to also form a pool in DP and then move the folders and files you want "off" the virtual DB drive "onto" the virtual DP drive. Does that help / make sense?

Hi Querl28. There's a few different ways. Simplest is you install the replacement drive, tell DrivePool to add it to the pool and then tell DrivePool to remove the old one from the pool. DP tell you whether it successfully moved all the files on the old drive across (in which case you can then physically remove the old drive) or not (in which case you have to decide what to do about it). If you don't have spare ports to add the new drive before removing the old one, but you have enough free space on your other drives in the pool, then you can tell DP to remove the old drive from the pool before you install the new one. See also this support page on removing drives.

Hi cliffes. Guess folks are busy (or sick). Do you still need advice or have you figured out a solution that works for your goal?

You can add drives to a pool without needing to give them a letter, and you can add/remove the letters from drives that are already in a pool without affecting the pool. So you could have for example: C: (operating system drive) D: (drivepool virtual drive) +--> thirty drives with no letters +--> ten drives with letters E through N P:, Q:, U: (three usb drives) R: (bluray drive) Cheers.

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).

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.

Just for reference: 1. There's a privilege level a step beyond Administrator: the SYSTEM account. It is possible to launch applications (including Explorer windows) as SYSTEM, but it involves a bit of shenanigans. 2. Even if you are logged in as an Administrator, there is a feature/bug of Windows (at least as of v7, haven't tested v8) that your Explorer windows default to running with only Standard user privileges. I don't recall the specifics, since I'm quite sick at the moment. EDIT: for a workaround to #2, see http://superuser.com/questions/58933/how-do-i-run-the-windows-7-explorer-shell-with-administrator-privileges-by-defau

Hi, sorry that noone appears to have responded, were you able to eventually create a ticket, or is this still outstanding?

Hmm. Did your computer reboot during the night at all? (e.g. from a windows update)

Hi James. Yes, if a trial version of DrivePool expires, it does become read-only (so your files are still intact and accessible) until you re-activate it with a paid licence. If you open the user interface for DrivePool, it should display how many days you have left in the trial or that it has expired.