Shane
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Posts posted by Shane
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Hi Larry, if you were able to create a pool then it sounds like your problem is different? What was the message you were getting?
Also if chkdsk is finding problems to fix, you might also want to try Stablebit Scanner or another utility that checks the SMART status of your drives to see if they're in good condition or going bad.
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The hidden PoolPart.* folders should still be on the physical drives that form the pool, so your data should still be intact.
Also your version is out of date; try upgrading to version 2.2.3.1019 of DrivePool, I have it working fine on Windows 10 build 2004.
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Can't imagine it'd be the trial status. I'm thinking it's a bug too (whether DP or something else). I'd suggest opening a support ticket via https://stablebit.com/contact to report it so that Stablebit can investigate (opening a ticket makes it easier for them to track and followup with you).
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So basically you want to be having CloudDrive sync things "downwards" rather than "upwards", so to speak?
It sounds like something you might be able to do yourself by renting a VPS (Virtual Private Server). Do an internet search for "VPS hosting"?
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If I had to guess, it might relate to the Windows API that handles thread priority adjustment: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/procthread/scheduling-priorities
So I would assume that -15 to +15 covers the availability priorities below/above a "normal" of 16 for the task (since "0" is exclusive to a special system thread).
In any case I'd be very careful about increasing it, Windows doesn't always handle "overclocking" processes well and you might want to be ready to deal with a non-responsive OS.
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That's bizarre! I'd suggest the following:
- uninstall DrivePool.
- delete the PoolPart.* folders on each drive (since you haven't used them yet, and since they're also not showing up in DrivePool, those folders should be safe to delete)
- reinstall DrivePool.
- "Add" your first drive. If it works properly, the "Create a New Pool" should switch to displaying your first pool and that pool's new drive letter, and the drive you added should move from the "Non-Pooled" section to the "Pooled" section.
When you created your first pool on the computer, you should also have had a "Congratulations!" window pop up with a few tips; if that didn't show up last time, it should show up now, but it only shows up once.
If you're still having problems, let us know.
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Can you attach a screenshot of the drivepool window?
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Sorry, I'd forgotten that DP doesn't allow dynamic disks (it's been years since I've had to deal with them). I did find answers here and here as to why in another thread; the TLDR is apparently dynamic disks aren't supported because they (the Windows API) make it difficult and thus slow for DrivePool to ensure any duplicate files are actually on separate physical disks, and customers don't like slow: to quote, "if your product is dirt slow, people will move on. ESPECIALLY when it comes to storage."
Re converting dynamic disks to basic disks there are some third-party partition managers that can do it without having to erase the content, so you might find a trial version to do the job as a one-off? Of course I'd make sure to have current backups just in case.
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Hi, do you still need a hand with this?
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Check "Manage Balancing -> Settings", that options such as "Balance immediately" and "Allow balancing plug-ins to force immediate balancing" are ticked?
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Do you still need help with this?
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File duplication and balancing settings are handled on a per-pool basis. So if Pool P used drives D and E, set to x2 dupe, and Pool Q used drives F and G, set to x1 (no) dupe, and you created a Pool R that used pools P and Q, set to x2 dupe, any files placed in Pool R would be effectively x3 dupe (x2 + x1) while any files placed in Pool P would still be x2 and any files placed in Pool Q would still be x1 (no) dupe.
So there would not be any balancing "between" Pools P and Q immediately following Pool R's creation, because there wouldn't yet be any files in Pool R to balance between them.
(And if you did later put a file in Pool R, you would not see it in Pool P or Q unless you turned on viewing of hidden items and looked inside P or Q for R's hidden PoolPart.* folders.)
Hope this makes sense and answers your question.
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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.
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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.
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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?
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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.
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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?
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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 NP:, Q:, U: (three usb drives)
R: (bluray drive)Cheers.
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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:
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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.
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Open up the Manage Pool -> Balancing menu.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Proceed to use the "Remove" feature to remove the other drives.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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?
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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).
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Fast ring updates?
eXtreme bottlenecks
in General
Posted
In my experience Resource Monitor's reporting of read and write rates can lag behind what's actually happening, making it look like it's transferring more files at any given point than it really is - but that transfer graph is definitely a sign of hitting some kind of bottleneck. It's the sort of thing I'd expect to see from a large number of small files, a network drive over wireless, or a USB flash drive.
Can you tell us more about what version of DrivePool you're using (the latest "stable" release is 2.2.3.1019), what drives are involved (HDD, SSD, other), how they're hooked up (SATA, USB, other) and if you've made any changes to the Manage Pool -> Performance options (default is to have only Read striping and Real-time duplication ticked)?
Examining the Performance indicators of DrivePool (to see it, maximise the DrivePool UI and click the right-pointing triangle to the left of the word Performance) and the Performance tab of Task Manager when the bottlenecking is happening might also be useful.
Hmm. You might also want to try something other than the built-in Windows copier to see if that helps, e.g. FastCopy ?