PoolBoy

The disk is 3TB. I've ordered a dock as suggested; so'll keep scanning until monday evening when the dock arrives. The data isn't replaceable but, blush, I don't remember the exact contents. So the most important for me is the directory listing.

I only check progress a few times a day., so times are ballpark estimates. Progress was at 9% after 10 hours scanning. Now 14 hours later it's back at 0%. EDIT, and back at 9% again Normal behavior or stuck in a loop?

I've ordered a nice dock which will arrive monday. In the meanwhile, can I let Windows continue repairing? Or is it known to mess up and there is better software for that? Any advise on recovery software? Or will Stabebit's Scanner do the job?

It's weird... I connected my HTPC and it just boots and doesn't even see the disk. (Win 10) My main PC starts repairing it, so obviously it sees the disk. I pulled out the disk and switched of automatic repair in the DOS box. Reconnected the disk. Booted. And.... Windows doesn't even see the disk. Not even in the disk management console. So I can't even attempt to repair from within windows. How is it possible that Windows sees the disk at boot time but not when it's fully booted? I decided to let Windows repair the disk. Extrapolating progress so far that will take about a week...

I started Scanner in the morning and when I returned in the evening Scanner completed scanning a disk. Unfortunately Scanner became unresponsive and didn't respond to any mouse clicks. I rebooted my PC and Windows 10 started repairing a disk. After 10 hours it was only at 10%, so I aborted it. I know which disk it is. Anyway I bypassed repair and booted my PC with the problematic disk attached. The disk is not part of a pool. How do I proceed to repair it? The disk doesn't show in 'Disk Management'

That's clear. I'll just remove and remeasure, until I know 100% sure remeasure isn't needed. Better safe than sorry. Looks like I have to start shopping for a new disk because I have not enough space to evacuate my largest disk. Unless I can limit how much space DrivePool uses on a certain drive. Feature request: Because evacuation is so important an option to temporarily evacuate to another pool or disks not being part of any pool would be a great option if the pool the dying disk is in doesn't have enough space to evacuate all data. Maybe prioritize non-duplicated data?

Understood, but that raises another question :-) Let's assume Scanner reports a disk is going south. Is removing the disk from the pool (in the DiskPool software) all it takes to move both duplicated and unduplicated files? Will DrivePool reduplicate duplicated files that are no longer accessible due to bad sectors? If the disk is totally dead will DrivePool start duplicating the files that were on the crashed disk? Those questions are quite relevant for me because Scanner gets quite nervous on several of my disk. For example one disk parked for over 340,000 times while it's rated at 300,000 times. Some disks are over 5 years old, but no bad sectors. I've read this: https://stablebit.com/Support/DrivePool/2.X/Manual?Section=Removing a Drive from the Pool But it's still not clear if DrivePool reduplicates files it can't read, or if the whole disk is dead.

I have Scanner installed now. I can't find the throttle SMART option. I did find the Standby time -> Standby enabled. I can switch that off but it gets turned back on automatically. Good tip on the balancer. What's the best way to move files back to their original disk? Shut down the service and then go inside the hidden PoolPartxxxx folders and just move? But that was only part of what I requested about the balancer. As per your suggestion I turn of the balancer. One of my disk has a root folder called HomeVideos. a] What happens if I write new stuff to that folder? Will it be on the same disk until that disk is 100% full? b] If the disk is 100% full then DrivePool obviously is forced to place new content on another disk. About a] I want new content always on the same disk. About b] That's good/logical behavior, but leads me to my original request. If I delete stuff that's on the original disk, I want stuff from other disks to be moved to make use of that empty space. So if HomeVideos is on D: and because D: is full some new content is placed on E: If I delete 10GB from D: it would be nice to move 10GB from E: to D:

Backup It would be nice to have an option to set which drives are prefered for duplicates/backups. There could be various reasons for doing so. - Just liking to have all backups in one place so other software can mirror them. - Based on speed. I would prefer to have my backups on my slowest drive. The last one may need some explanation. If understood correctly DrivePool uses both the original and duplicate files to speed up transfers. That's great if all files are duplicated. But not if not everything is duplicated. Example: The pool contains duplicated data which automatically gets a speed boost. But it's also used for temp files, replaceble data etc. It would be nice that those files would not end up on the slowest disk. The above should be a strict guideline, not a unbreakable rule. If DrivePool runs out of backup space it starts using other drives. Maybe a drive that's ranked as a second choice backup drive. Optionally DrivePool could give a warning the backup drive is full. Keep awake I have USB disk attached that go to sleep and take sometimes 10+ seconds to wake up. To stop the drives going to sleep I run a little program that simply accesses the disks every few minutes.That functionality would be nice to have in DrivePool. Possibly with a schedule. Balancing I understand the need and benefits for balancing and just keep doing as needed. Still I have a request. Drive contents can change greatly. Like lots of deleted or added data. A empty drive can be added to the pool. Etc. Etc. My suggestion can take hours to complete and therefore possibly should be scheduled at night or manually. Maybe I one will unlearn this preference but I prefer my files places as there were when the drive was added to the DrivePool. I know I can lock folders from moving, but I think I should give DrivePool some breathing room to do it's stuff and not cripple it with a lot of rules. I want to suggest that whenever possible the balancer merges the folders of the same root when possible. Even if that means it has to shuffle around 5TB of data. If not possible reduce the amount of breaking them down as much as possible.

Updates are a blessing and a curse.... So often software starts out as something good but not yet complete. Updates are very welcome at that point. But there comes a point a product is finished feature wise. But the product must keep generating cash, so stuff must be added. Often every year because licenses expire. So new income. But when a product is finished, what should be added? That's often the point a product turns into bloatware. Which I hate. Wizards. Bloated skins. Animations. StableBit now has 3 programs for sale and some in the pipeline (I would like to get my hands on StabelBit.me!) I just bought the bundle of three after less than 3 days trial. Anyway my point is that some companies would merged all those things into one product. Especially Scanner is a logical companion/part of DrivePool. It integrates and could be called one piece of software. My point is this: The way StableBit does things right now causes people to think DrivePool is abandon ware. If StableBit would gradually added Scanner and Cloud functionality to DrivePool, people would applaud for the many updates. But the total amount of functionality is exactly the same... Some people may need just one thing and they can buy just that one thing at a fair price. If StableBit would have merged everything into one program the customer would be 'forced' to buy all that unwanted functionality. Very likely at a much higher price. DrivePool then would likely had the bundle price of $60 instead of the current price ($30).

What if a network share is mapped to a drive letter in Windows? Or doesn't it matter how the network location is presented? Network path or Disk (which has a path hidden behind it) Saves me from trying the same thing :-)

I found a few oddities... a] A certain folder is 1.25TB On the underlaying source disk my file manager (Directory Opus) counts it as 1.25TB. In the virtual PoolDisk my file manager counts it as 1.25TB. But Windows properties counts it as 475GB b] When DrivePool balances data, it changes Folder dates. The sub-folders of those restamped folders have changed dates too. I haven't found files with changed dates yet, but that's because I have too many to check. The strange thing is that when I go all the way down into those folders no file dates have changed. It's not that I daily check my file dates, but I find it useful that they stay unchanged when they didn't change. My backup software does notice many changes in 'NTFS folder security settings' and acts on it. I just ran a manual backup and it backed up a bunch of files that where changed while I slept. My PC doesn't use those files because they aren't used by any software (since over a year) Besides that this takes time it messes with my backups. I keep several generations of my files, but if PoolDisk tricks my backup software to think files are changed they will be backed up and I end up with several generations of a file being exactly the same. That defeats the purpose of generations... :-) Is there a setting that forbids PoolDisk to mess with file stamps, attributes and NTFS security settings in any way? If this is just a one time side effect of building the PoolDisk it's no big deal. BTW while by backup software found hundreds of changed NTFS security settings very few actual files were backed up. c] I'm not sure I even should ask this question because I'm not sure... DrivePool statistics show more GB of duplicated files than there are in the folder it is duplicating. Duplication is still running (over 9 hours now) and perhaps it's going to clean scrap files after it's done. And yeah, I was so stupid not to write down the exact size of that folder before migrating to DrivePool. So I can't make firm statements. I can't manually count them on the source disks because I don't know which files are the originals and which ones the duplicates. Anyway, I know about what the folder size was, and while duplication is now at just 50% it's already a little higher what I think it should be. But it could be right. But if it's double when duplication is finished it certainly is wrong because I know it wasn't that big and it would be bigger that the source drive capacity. QUESTION Manage Pool -> File protection... In 'Folder duplication' I can duplicated per folder. 'Pool file duplication..." is an all or nothing thing. How do I duplicate files that are in the root of my PoolDisk? Good sales pitch Christopher: I'm gonna buy 'em all! I hope StableBit keeps actively adding functionality without making it bloatware and the family of programs will expand :-)

Thanks for all the answers! I'm sure I'll get a license for DrivePool. Currently I'm deciding I'll buy all 3 programs because that gives me a nice discount. But I have no use for cloud yet as it works right now, the Scanner might be ok for my uses. The more I play with it, the more useful Drive pool is looking for my situation. For example I have a whole bunch of HDDs that have become to small; but being part of a DrivePool they regained their usefulness again. Anyway I pooled 2 disks with not so important data and it works great. As expected of course :-) Today I'll add a third disk with file duplication for one folder. Again thanks for the to-the-point answers.

Can all PCs with a valid license access (read/write) the same data stored in the cloud? Or is the data in some way locked to the license that created it? Is it possible to setup read only access? Finally is browser access possible? I'm aware everything is encrypted but perhaps with a browser plugin. It could be handy to download a few files to my phone during travel.

I'm not saying @Umfriend is wrong. Not at all. In fact the documentation/advertising clearly states no database is involved. I just wasn't sure that means no database at all or that the files themselves aren't in the database. I feel much better knowing it retains the full directory structure. If the hypothetical database crashes then all I have to do is copy the folder structures into one place and all merges back to my unbalanced structure. I can live with that. Yeah, I do. Don't I? :-) Considering your setup, you are very serious with your data. That's why I think you can fully understand my concerns of wrecking my data. I'm a lot older than a anthill and slightly younger than Mt. Everest and I've seen to many alpha releases that got marked as stable/final to trust anything. :-) Please don't feel offended by that StableBit! I think I got my answers now. I'll do some tests with scrap data and check out how things are really stored while keeping all helpful info from both of you in mind.

I fully understand the files are still in plain NTFS and readable. But that's not my question/concern. Look at it this way. 001.jpg 002.jpg and 003.jpg are originally in one folder. I move them to a pool which is a group of 3 disks. Balancing puts one file on each disk. All NTFS, correct names, etc When I look in the pools I see one file in each of them. When I open the virtual drive it shows a single folder with all 3 files in them. Exactly as it should be. Good. BUT how does it know those files belong together? I can only think of two ways to know: a] A database. Fast but prone to corruption. b] At startup scan the disks and from the folder names figure out the original structure. Safe but very time consuming.

Maybe a StableBit representative is reading and could answer the part about the corrupt database. Maybe the software keeps shadow copies?

I know the files are there, but I don't know which file belonged in which folder. Example: I keep al my vaction photo's. Folder Vaction2010 holds pictures 001.jpg...200.jpg Folder Vaction2011 holds pictures 001.jpg...200.jpg .... Folder Vaction2018 holds pictures 001.jpg...200.jpg So, how can I ever know in which folder 001.jpg belonged? And that's the 'easy' part. I could in theory check all photo's and reorganize them. But I also have video's which are converted to DVDs. A DVD folder contains a lot of files that's aren't user readable. BTW: There is a typo in the page your signature links to. 72GB --> 72TB and 16GB -> 16TB

Thanks for all the answers. I'll start to explore the software a little more in the next few days. While it does look good, I feel a bit uneasy using it. If the database crashes all my files are gone. Yes, I do understand the files are still there; but considering it are many thousands of them with often (duplicate) non-descriptive names, all data is gone practically speaking. The only way around that is a backup of the virtual DrivePool disk itself I guess.

I wasn't planning to install software in the pool. Just data files used by the software. That said I don't understand why Plex doesn't liked to be installed in the PoolDisk if looks 100% like a single disk to Windows. So I'm wondering what the limitations of the PoolDisc are. My guess is making a pool which includes a System disc is a big nono because Windows may get split up over several discs if it's not locked to one disc. That may cause Windows failing to boot if the DrivePool drivers don't load before Windows loads... Jaga, that answers all my questions. For now... :-)

Question #1 - Starting a pool I created a pool of 3 disks and nothing shows up in the newly created DrivePool. I searched a bit and in a old thread 2015 thread I found I have to manually seed the pool by moving folders into PoolPartxxxx. That works. Is it still the way things suppose to be done? Question #2 - After the trial epires I'm using a 30-day demo. What happens after that expires. Can I still access my files and copy them back were they once were? Question #3 - Balancing When DrivePool starts balancing my disks, does that mean it copies files between my 3 drives as it sees fit? If so that likely is great as long as I access my files using DrivePool but when directly go to my drives then the files will be scattered all over the 3 disks. An example to explain my question. Suppose the 'Vaction2010' folder contains all my video's and photo's from that vaction. I put that folder in the DrivePool. Where will the individual photo's be? Still all in the same folder. Or scattered over 3 drives as a result of balancing them? Question #4 - File access I guess a side effect of using DrivePool is that all software has to be 'relinked' to the files via the DrivePool disk and not the original disk? Question #5 - Mixing different speed drives My drives all have different speeds. Some things are on the faster disk because they are used more frequently. Other things don't require speed or are rarely accessed. Is pooling such drives wise? I ask because if I understand balancing, it could turn out my frequently used files end up on the slowest HDD Sorry for all the questions. I'm just a bit scared I totally mess up my well organized disks...