Jaga
-
Posts
413 -
Joined
-
Last visited
-
Days Won
27
Posts posted by Jaga
-
-
Very welcome, hope it helped.
-
If Pools 2/3 are for duplicated only, then it looks like it's doing exactly what you wanted, which is good news. It's spreading ~431 gig with duplication to the USB and Cloud pools. (431+431+431) / 1024 = 1.262 TB.
The message is probably an indicator that the free space vs data balance across the pools is very uneven, which in your case you can safely ignore. I haven't seen that message yet personally, but I auto-balance between all drives in a single pool (typical NAS style).
Still, might be something for Christopher and Alex to review to see if they want that message displayed when such a specific filter is applied. Don't see anything wrong either way with your setup.
-
It looks like you have balancing turned off, or set on a long schedule. From what I can see in the screenshot, only your duplicated files are spread across the top-tier pool, and none of your non-duplicated are being balanced. Did you check balancing settings on the top-tier Pool to see if it's on or off?
-
I think functionally (for a surface test) a SATA 2 connection would work fine. If I was going to diagnose the drive fully, I'd prefer a straight connection rather than a bay. But both might work. Typical repair/test utilities might have better luck with a normal cabled connection.
-
I know I'm jumping in while Christopher is trying to help, but with as many installs/upgrades/versions as you've tried, have you ever tried hitting the "Reset Everything to Defaults" link in the Balancer "Settings" tab, and then rebooting? After that, reset the balancer to the way you want it to work, and see if it kicks off when you change it to immediate. I see you did that originally, but it might help after upgrades/reinstalls.
Other than that, I'll step out of the way and let Christopher get back to it.
-
Welcome, glad I could help.
-
Did you double-check the folder/file structure on that drive to make sure it wasn't a complete copy? Automatic balancing can create a full folder structure on multiple disks, but the files (when balanced) end up distributed among many disks even if multiple copies (duplication) aren't enabled.
As for checking on duplication within/on the pool, click the "Manage Pool ^" under the visual space pie chart, choose "File Protection", and then either choice to see what kind of duplication you have set on the Pool itself, or Folders within the Pool. Pool Duplication is an all-or-nothing thing, while Folder duplication is set on individual folders within the disk structure.
I'm going to guess you didn't have a full set of files on that drive you checked - just the full folder structure making you think it was all there. I could be wrong, if you had balancing turned off for example. Take a look at the duplication settings first, then a look at the files on that drive.
-
Plex doesn't mind if it's data (media) resides on the Pool and it is in fact recommended due to it's size. But I've read multiple posts from different people elsewhere that strongly discourage putting the local Plex data folder (images, etc) on the Pool. I haven't tried doing that, and due to warnings I probably never will. So you don't have to actually point Plex to the individual physical drives when setting up a media Library, just use your Pool pathing.
For a more in-depth explanation of why not to put Plex's data on the Pool, see this post, and look for the mention of Plex's database.
It doesn't sound like you have the auto-balancer configured to spread new file copies between the physical drives, or you'd be seeing new stuff your add appear on all three drives. Then the duplicator looks to see which physical drive each file resides on, and copies that file to (X) other drives depending on your duplication settings (how many copies). If you have three drives and a duplication factor of 3 (keep 3 total copies) on some content, each drive will have a full copy of the content (folders and files).
Depending on the balancer and your auto-balance settings, you'd either see a full copy of the folder/file structure when you connected the drive to another PC... or just a portion of it (since the balancer without duplication spreads a folder/file structure between pool drives). Mine for example only has one important folder I told it to use 2x duplication on. The majority of my content has 1x duplication (none). If I pulled a drive and put it in another computer, it would only show a portion of most of my files, since the other 2/3 reside on the other 2 data drives in my pool. I have auto-balancing turned on so it spreads files around evenly.
You could either turn on the balancer (or force it to kick off manually) to spread files around your Pool disks, or use some sort of protection scheme on your drives in case you lose one. I currently use Snapraid, as it only needs 1 drive itself to protect a Pool using parity, is very flexible, and can be added after the Pool is established.
I don't have an easy answer for your share permissions issue, perhaps Christopher or someone else could suggest a fix.
-
While I'm certainly not as good at diagnosing Drivepool/Scanner issues as the team here, things I would tend to suspect first:
- The update to the Drivepool software, from very old to most recent. Might have made changes to the COFS (file system) that the old schema simply wasn't 100% compatible with, and which started causing issues on pooled disks.
- The controller(s) on the motherboard, since I don't think you have an add-in SAS/SATA card. Possibly even cables/connections.
- The Scanner software itself. Christopher might have a better Beta version for you to use (he often does).
- The filters imposed by both MalwareBytes and Acronis. They might be interfering with disk operations, or colliding with the Performance feature in Drivepool for enabling/disabling filters.
Also - have you taken any of the drives and plugged them into any other workstations with comparable SATA levels (i.e. SATA3 controller+cable) to check them on a known good system? I'd be particularly interested in the newest Ironwolf, and what tests on it would show. You could do the same for the others, to isolate any potential problems from your current software/OS/hardware layers, and *just* test the drives, and possibly their cables. If they were damaged and could be repaired, then placed back into the current system, they would act as tests themselves... if they re-corrupted after off-system repair, you'd know it was something about your system and not any of the drives.
-
The files that made up that third copy are simply removed from your pool drives. They no longer exist. Each copy in a set of mirrored files/folders are valid originals, each as good as the other. It doesn't matter which set Drivepool erases when you lower the duplication factor.
You could have a duplication factor of six, then lower it to two, and the extra four copies would simply be deleted from the pool. Duplicates removed in this way also free up pool space.
-
As far as heat goes, I find watercooling to be an effective solution... but not like most people use it. I don't move it from the components into water, then directly into the air with radiators. Instead I have a ~30 gallon denatured water reservoir (basically an insulated camping cooler) that I use two submerged pumps with, one moves water through the CPU/GPU/Chipset coolers on the workstation, the other cycles water through a Hydroponics chiller which vents the heat through heating/cooling duct pipes to push it straight out the window at night.
The practical effect of this is that very few BTUs of heat make it into the room during the day during the summer. In the winter I disconnect the ducting from the window and have it dump into the room - providing extra and practical heating to help save on power use.
The only drawback is the initial purchase cost - the 1/2 HP Hydroponics Chiller and Industrial fan to move air were around $700, and the watercooling elements around another $300. But I've been using the same setup for around 4 years now, with only water changes for maintenance, and it's delightfully cool in the summer and warm in the winter. I don't have to run A/C or Heating in that room if I don't want to, and it's one of the most exposed in the house here.
Interestingly, your GTX puts out the most heat, on average. I can run my CPU with Prime95 for days on end (24/7), and not begin to approach the amount of heat my 980ti or 1060 dump into the water in even one day. The drives by comparison (unless fully loaded 100% of the time) don't use that much power compared to even your GTX at idle. A dozen spinners at ~4 watts each (average of idle vs loaded) barely take 50 watts. The idle spec for your video card are 71 watts Idle, 288 under full load.
To sum up: consider controlling the heat by using watercooling to keep it in a large reservoir during the day, then push it out at night using either a chiller, or radiators. Simply using air cooling means no matter what mechanism you use to remove the heat, you're just dumping it back into the room immediately.
-
You should consider using Drivepool's Hierarchical Pooling feature.
Let's call your existing data pool Pool 1. Make another identical pool using the two new drives you have, we'll call that Pool 2. Disable all mirroring on both pools so you only have a duplication factor of 1.
Then make a third pool called Pool Mirror, which consists of Pools 1 and 2. Enable full mirroring on Pool Mirror, and you have full redundancy. Drivepool will auto-balance between your old pool and your new one.
Additionally, Umfriend is correct - despite being a mirror of live data, pools are not backups where you instance the data and can go back to get old copies (or deleted ones) later. For that I might recommend something like Snapraid. You'd want to purchase another disk, set it up as Snapraid's parity, and then sync on a regular basis. If you lost a file/folder/drive you could easily use the parity information Snapraid made to restore what you needed - back to the last date of syncing.
Damaged Flash Drive - CHKDSK finds nothing
in General
Posted
Agree with Christopher on USB flash drives - they are really only reliable enough for transporting data temporarily, and if you value that data you should always have it mirrored elsewhere.
Think of them like Dixie paper cups, compared to a strong aluminum camping thermos which is a good solid enterprise drive. Now step on each. There's a difference in durability.
Since you're already seeing errors from it (random ones non-withstanding), I'd say it isn't long for this world. Especially if it's subjected to ~24 hours worth of tests. Replace when able!