RobFranklin

IMHO, buy before re-installing windows, activate drivepool so the pool is tied to your account, then you have to de-activate drivepool before wiping and re-installing windows in order to activate it again on the clean install. I would remove all drives not being used for the windows install during the wipe. Once in windows, updated and DrivePool installed, power down the system, re-install the drives in one batch and power up, drivepool should detect the pool and it'll be re-instated with no need of a re-build like a typical raid array.

Post was poorly worded in the most critical section, apologies. Those are the settings I'm using. After removing all file placement rules, resetting balancers to default, and re-instating the file placement rules, then setting the balancer priorities and settings, it's finally leaving the files in place on the drive, but always shows file distribution is not optimal, somewhere around 90%, and the arrows show it wants to move the data back onto the other drives, but it doesn't through automated or manual balancing. Also, the drives are no longer even close to evenly distributed for data, where they were prior to moving the data back off.

There isn't any automated renaming system, but changing just the first folder name off the root directory should get the job done. I have a set of asset directories with identical file names, but with different folder names, so there's no confusion to me or DrivePool. Manual file retrieval would be impossible, but here's hoping I don't have to.

Hello All, Hoping for some help as I've been fighting this problem for literally days now. First of all, the specs: Windows 10 x64 1809 DrivePool 2.2.2.934 4x 1TB Spinning Disks 1x 3TB Spinning Disk 1x 1TB Samsung 860 Evo Currently Runnning the StableBit Scanner First, SSD Optimizer Second, Disk Space Equalizer Third and Prevent Drive Overfill Fourth. I have Immediate Balancing enabled, not more often than every Hour, or if more than 10GB needs to be moved, with plug-ins allowed to force immediate balancing(in case a drive throws a smart error, some of the 1TB drives are OLD). I've unchecked "File placement rules respect real-time file placement limits set by the balancing plug-ins" and have "Balancing Plug-ins respect file placement rules" and unchecked "Unless the drive is being emptied." I have set file placement rules to put regularly used, and game files on the SSD only, and have selected "Never allow files to be placed on any other disks." But the balancers put the files onto the SSD, then take them back off when I force a re-balance. I'm moving around 200GB of files, so it's not fast. I'm not sure how to convince the SSD optimizer to stop dumping these files off to spinning disks at this point. Some of the files are program files, as I have a 256GB NVMe SSD for my boot drive that I only put the absolute most critical programs and files on to keep it from filling up, or exceeding writes. I can create a dynamic link from the drivepool location to the native partition on the SSD and bypass drivepool entirely for these files, but I like having control for everything in one console.

That's way overkill. I don't need hotswap at all for my drives, so the rosewill that costs less than half as much will allow me to space them out more, and have room for plenty of drives for future expansion. Why would I need to swap out the boot drive? I think I'll upgrade my main rig from the Ryzen 5 2400G to an 1800X for the extra cores and PCIe lanes, and grab a cheap asrock x370 board with 8 SATA connectors, which should cover me for a while on drives.

Excellent points folks and I appreciate your responses. I actually have a tower already on hand that I'm going to use which has 11 5.25" bays, so I'm going to get three Rosewill 3x.5.25">4x3.5 bay adapters with 120mm fans to house all the drives. That should be plenty of space to fit all the drives, and give them plenty of room to breathe. On the motherboard front, I would be thrilled to get some more specific input for boards that can handle all the drives, minimum 8 total, and a CPU that is in the same power arena of the previously mentioned parts. I know it'll never run the CPU up to any major load, but idle power draw on a full power desktop part, generall 65W TDP, is still going to be higher than full load on the 15W parts I'm looking at. Maybe that new Athlon 220GE, I believe it's a single CCX part with a tiny iGPU and rated at 35W TDP?

Good Day All, I've been running DrivePool for some time now, and have recently built myself a new main computer for everyday use and gaming, but it's quite power hungry and generates a fair amount of heat. Thus, I've decided to build a separate, dedicated system to run my "server" on, which will include drivepool running over 64-bit windows. I don't have a major preference on which version of windows to run, and I've go licenses to spare for Windows 7 and Windows 10, are there any real advantages to either for a very basic home server, which shouldn't have to do any real time trans-coding or anything difficult at all, just share the files across the network and be reliable? As for the Hardware, I'd like it to be as lower power as is physically possible, without running into any significant performance issues. It seems from my use of the software for several years, that even with Network I/O prioritization on, it doesn't use much actual CPU horsepower or memory. So I'm considering one of the ASRock embedded options, but would love some feedback on which would be the minimum necessary to run without cpu issues. I'm leaning towards the J4105, but the N5005 seems like an equally viable option, if possibly overkill for the lack of additional features, if drivepool even needs/supports 4 cores? I'll probably throw a spare 8GB 3200 memory kit in it, which is hugely overkill for these CPUs on speed, but I already have it, and 8GB should be plenty to run the system. Any thoughts on this CPU being enough, or not? For a SATA controller, as that system would only offer 2xSATA ports, I've found the Ablecon PEX10-SAT which is a 10 port sata host, which uses the ASMedia ASM1062 PCIe sata controller for 2 SATA ports, then a pair of JMicron JMB575 SATA IIII port multipliers to create 10 total SATA ports. Aside from any compatibility issues I'm not aware of, this seems like an ideal option, since drivepool really only writes to 1 drive at a time, and read striping would only be across 2 drives in the system, so I likely won't saturate even a single SATA 3 port with spinning disk drives. I'll have at least one SATA based SSD for the OS and an SSD cache drive for the system running on the integrated controller on the motherboard to give it as much bandwidth as possible. Likely a 960 Evo 512GB or 1TB, or comparable drive, depending on deals on them in the near future. Am I missing any compatibility or other issues in this arrangement? Drives currently running in Drivepool(for reference) 3x Samsung HD103SI drives 1TB ea, 32mb cache. (Had a 4th for raid 10 at one point, but am down to 3, not bad for 6 year old drives) 1x WD Green 3TB 64mb cache drive, ~3years old, 0 problems to date. Will be adding 1-2 drives in the near future, hoping to ~double the total drive space available so a pair of 3-4TB drives at most, maybe a pair of 2TB drives depending on $/GB and black friday sales. If you've managed to read all of this and have ANY useful advice on the set-up, I would absolutely appreciate it!