Shane
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Posts posted by Shane
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If you followed https://stablebit.com/Support/CloudDrive/Manual?Section=Reattaching your Drive it should have warned you that it was still attached to the old machine.
If you didn't get that warning, I'd recommend contacting Stablebit.
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Pretty much as VapechiK says. Here's a how-to list based on your screenshot at the top of this topic:
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Create a folder, e.g. called "mounts" or "disks" or whatever, in the root of any physical drive that ISN'T your drivepool and IS going to be always present:
- You might use your boot drive, e.g. c:\mounts
- You might use a data drive that's always plugged in, e.g. x:\mounts (where "x" is the letter of that drive)
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Create empty sub-folders inside the folder you created, one for each drive you plan to "hide" (remove the drive letter of):
- I suggest a naming scheme that makes it easy to know which sub-folder is related to which drive.
- You might use the drive's serial number, e.g. c:\mounts\12345
- You might have a labeller and put your own labels on the actual drives then use that for the name, e.g. c:\mounts\501
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Open up Windows Disk Management and for each of the drives:
- Remove any existing drive letters and mount paths
- Add a mount path to the matching empty sub-folder you created above.
- Reboot the PC (doesn't have to be done straight away but will clear up any old file locks etc).
That's it. The drives should now still show up in Everything, as sub-folders within the folder you created, and in a normal file explorer window the sub-folder icons should gain a small curved arrow in the bottom-left corner as if they were shortcuts.
P.S. And speaking of shortcuts I'm now off on a road trip or four, so access is going to be intermittent at best for the next week.
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Create a folder, e.g. called "mounts" or "disks" or whatever, in the root of any physical drive that ISN'T your drivepool and IS going to be always present:
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Hi Bear; you need to mount the poolpart drives to paths on a NTFS drive outside the pool structure. So in your case don't mount them inside D:\ and don't mount them inside any *:\PoolPart.* folder.
That way #1 their content will still be visible in Everything (which I use too) and #2 you're not risking a recursive loop in your file system!
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Hi bhoard, I think it's likely the drive was able to recover from whatever the power issues did to it. If Scanner still doesn't pick anything up on the next scheduled scan, personally I'd be comfortable continuing to use the drive. Also maybe consider getting a UPS if power issues are an ongoing problem in your area?
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If the Windows 10 Fast Startup feature is enabled, which is the default, when you do a normal Shutdown it will snapshot an image of the current kernel, drivers, and system state in memory to disk and then on boot it'll load from the image but if you do a Restart it doesn't take the snapshot and instead performs a Normal Start where it goes through the normal process of loading the kernel, the drivers and system state component-by-component from the boot drive etc.
So if it's the Restart that makes the pool drive unavailable, that would suggest the issue is occurring during the normal full boot process. I'd try looking in DrivePool's Cog->Troubleshooting->Service Log after a Restart fails to make the drive available, to see if there are any clues there - e.g. it might just be something is timing out the find-and-mount routine, in which case you can increase the CoveFs_WaitFor***Ms entries as described in https://wiki.covecube.com/StableBit_DrivePool_2.x_Advanced_Settings until it picks up.
If you're still stuck after looking at the Log, you can request a support ticket via StableBit's contact form.
EDIT: made it clearer that only the CoveFs_WaitFor***Ms entries (i.e. the ones ending in Ms) are to be changed. The wiki mentions CoveFs_WaitForVolumesOnMount without the Ms, that's a deprecated entry that isn't used by newer versions of DrivePool.
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It also occurs to me that some users may have the opposite issue: where they use apps that rely on the presence of folders that may be empty at times for whatever reason, so they wouldn't want those folders being automatically removed by DrivePool.
So any "cleanup empty folders" function implemented by DrivePool would have to ensure that it only removes "excess" instances of such folders within the poolparts, the same as it does with files. How tricky would it be to extend DrivePool's duplication-checking to check for excess instances of empty folders in addition to excess instances of files (e.g. currently, if duplication is set to x3 and there are x4 instances of a file, DrivePool will remove the 4th instance of that file - can DrivePool be made to apply that to empty folders too)?
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You could request it as a feature via the contact form? @Christopher (Drashna) perhaps there could be an option to schedule it alongside the regular pool consistency checks, and/or as a dpcmd command which could be run manually or scheduled (e.g. via Task Scheduler) by those for whom it's a significant issue?
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Hi baChewie, if you'd like Stablebit to take a look at / ask for logs from your affected setup directly, you could submit a support request via the contact form to get a ticket going.
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Hmm. I tried adding the entry and experienced the same result as you.
I've looked at the change log for DrivePool and I suspect that CoveFs_WaitForVolumesOnMount was actually replaced with CoveFs_WaitForVolumesOnMountMs when the latter was added as of version 2.2.0.891 - so if your version is that or later then I believe you should use the latter entry (and setting a value of 0 for it would be equivalent to setting a value of false for the former entry).
@Christopher (Drashna) does the wiki need to be amended to indicate that the first entry has been deprecated in favor of the second entry, or is something else going on?
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Hi Sacred, the entry should be CoveFs_WaitForVolumesOnMountMs and that entry should already be present in the Settings.json file.
You might also want to try stopping the service before editing the file, only then restarting the service afterwards.
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It's not possible; the operating system has to be loaded before DrivePool can start. You could mount a pool as a folder on the boot drive (e.g. have it show up as "c:\pool" instead of "d:\") but not as the boot drive itself.
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2 hours ago, gtaus said:
Any idea on how much overhead DrivePool adds to the process in the drive removal process? With larger and larger HDD's, this is becoming more of an issue for me. I like to keep my DrivePool up and running while I remove a drive, so I plan for a good 3 days to remove a 4TB drive. But it would be nice to know how much longer DrivePool takes to remove a drive compared to stopping DrivePool and manually moving them yourself.
I know the overhead's more noticeable when moving smaller files, but I haven't kept any hard numbers sorry. I also try to always keep at least one spare port (internal or external) available so that I can just plug in a new drive and let DrivePool take care of the rest, and everything at least x2 duplicated (and backed up) so if I'm in a hurry for some reason (e.g. a drive failing in a way that panics the OS) I can simply just ditch the culprit and let DrivePool handle re-duplication.
I'm shifting things around at the moment but I've a mostly-full 4TB drive (internal SATA) I could test removing both normally and manually afterwards if you're interested (not that such a test would be rigorous, since pool content varies, but the offer's there). Do you use duplication?
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Sorry, I'm stumped. Your settings look like they should be resulting in an even distribution. Is there anything active at all in the File Placement tab, or lower down in the Balancers tab? Is "Balancers -> SSD Optimizer -> Ordered placement -> Duplicated" unticked?
Does changing to "Equalize by the free space remaining" have a better result?
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Sadly no. As I understand it, only "single thread" (so to speak) balancing was implemented due to the considerable extra complexity that would be involved in getting "multiple thread" balancing to work well.
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It's every 30 days for all three (edit: except see Christopher's post below) and I believe the logic is attempting to find a reasonable balance between load/wear and frequency for most users; you can adjust to your personal situation/preferences.
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I don't know if it's related, but Stablebit just had a Microsoft-related issue with their cloud infrastructure that lasted several hours. If you're still having problems you might want to get in touch with Stablebit via the contact form.
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If you're having licensing issues, please use the Contact form to request help directly from Stablebit.
... once their server comes back up. Ouch.
P.S. I've rebooted my home server (YOLO) and DrivePool and Scanner are still showing as licensed, and I can reach the stablebit.cloud site, so @PBUK and @Tullerian perhaps try again in case the part affecting you is working again?
EDIT: this link https://status.stablebit.cloud/ shows that some services are down and has the following message at the top:
Quotestablebit.com is experiencing connectivity issues with its database. As a result, our cloud licensing system is currently offline. Microsoft is actively investigating. We have identified that during a brief period of time an underlying network infrastructure has suffered with power issues, resulting in downstream impact. We have engaged different teams to keep our investigation on the best mitigation workstream and the alleviation of the impact.
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It's come up a few times over the years. This post mentions reasons why DP might leave empty (and "empty") folders, while this post mentions a really neat trick with robocopy that can be used to clean them up if you decide you want them gone anyway - note that if you use it but you've got any empty folders you actually want to keep you'll have to exclude them somehow (e.g. via the /XD switch). Hope that helps.
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If it's happening on a regular schedule you might want to check if anything is running in the background (e.g. via Windows Task Scheduler) at those times? Otherwise I'd suggest using the Contact form to request support from Stablebit.
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By default a file will normally be copied into the pool using whichever drive within that has the most free space at the time, so if they're all empty it would presumably use the 10TB drives first (and this is the behaviour I see using FreefileSync to back up files to my pool).
How much RAM does the sending and receiving computer(s) have? Do any of the suggestions at https://www.makeuseof.com/insufficient-system-resources-exist-error-windows/ help?
I also found this topic https://freefilesync.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=8868 in the FFS forums, in which the OP discovered the issue was a faulty RAM stick in their computer, so that's another possibility. Another poster suggested editing the LanManServer record in the registry. Note that if editing the registry doesn't help, I recommend reverting the change in case it causes other issues later.
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It would complain every time it does a health check of the pool, and offer to delete all the older file(s) under the assumption that there was an error in duplicating the newer instance of the file across the pool, but it won't delete any automatically unless you tick the box that tells it to do so for future checks. However note too that if you yourself update the "single" file that shows up in the pool (or move it out of the pool) then only one of the actual files in the poolparts will actually be moved/updated and the rest will be lost.
E.g. if you manually put test.txt (contains the word "apple") into d:\poolpart1 and manually put test.txt (contains the word "orange") into e:\poolpart2 and then you open p:\test.txt you might get the one that contains "apple" or you might get the one that contains "orange", and if you moved p:/test.txt to c:/test.txt or edited it to say "banana" then only one would be moved/edited and the other one would be lost or overwritten.
(at least, when read-striping is off; I'm not sure whether something more odd might happen if read-striping is on and the files involved are large).
And thankyou!
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Q: I understand now that these apparently surprising duplicated files in my pie chart were in fact mine from the beginning. Is it then a problem to leave them there ?
If they're actually duplicates, i.e. the exact same file with the same path in different poolparts, then no problem.
Q: I then don't quite understand the duplication warning that I get during the check : what can be the "duplicated files mismatching parts" ? I also noticed that when theses duplicates files just have the same name but are not really the same binary file (for example 2 different videos with the same name), then DrivePool just shows one of the two files in the pool. Which one does DrivePool choose ? Is this the case seen by DrivePool as a "duplicated files mismatching parts" case during the check ?
Yes, this indeed occurs when different files with the same path and name have been moved into different poolparts.
For example, let's say you have a photo of a cat saved as d:\photos\cute24.jpg and a photo of a dog saved as e:\photos\cute24.jpg and you manually move them into the hidden poolpart folder on the respective drives like so:
d:\photos\cute24.jpg <- cat -> d:\poolpart1\photos\cute24.jpg --> shows up in the pool as p:\photos\cute24.jpg
e:\photos\cute24.jpg <- dog -> e:\poolpart2\photos\cute24.jpg --> also shows up in the pool as p:\photos\cute24.jpgIf you had moved the cat photo into p:\photos the normal way (d -> p) and then moved the dog photo into p:\photos the normal way (e -> p), Windows would pop up a warning that there's already a file there with that name and ask if you wanted to replace it). But by accessing the hidden poolparts directly (d -> d:\poolpart and e -> e:\poolpart) you bypass the normal safety procedures.
As to which one DrivePool chooses to show, I believe it would be whichever drive that DrivePool accesses first (which would depend on various factors).
Q: And finally one last question : how to know the physical path of a file seen in the pool ? (i.e. when browsing the pool, how to know on which physical disk is a file located ?)
There are various ways, for example:
- Manually check the equivalent path in each hidden poolpart folder.
- Open a command prompt run as an administrator and enter dpcmd get-duplication filepath where filepath is the fully pathed name of the file ( e.g. dpcmd get-duplication "p:\photos\cute pets\oscar the turtle.jpg" ) <-- note this shows the volume numbers, not the drive letters, so you'd have to look it up in Windows Disk Management or similar to find the corresponding drive letters (dpcmd does this because DrivePool can pool volumes without them requiring a drive letter).
- Use a tool which can quickly scan lettered NTFS volumes and show all files on all drives that match the search string, e.g. Everything by Voidtools can do this.
External drives to a JBOD enclosure.
in Hardware
Posted
Yes, that's correct.