Pool Still useable while removing a drive?

[580guy 1]

I haven't been able to ascertain this while searching throught the forums and blogs.  While removing a drive from the pool, is the pool still useable through the remaining drives?  In other words, is my server unuseable until Drivepool finishes removing the drive from the pool?  As this could take a day or so to perform, I am trying to figure out if I will still have PC Backup, FTP, Media streaming, etc available during this time.  Is Drivepool smart enough to allow you to still use the remaining drives in the pool while removing a single drive from the pool?

 

This will help me plan a little more if I am not going to have the use of my server for a day or so.  The drive I am planning to remove is fine, but I just don't want it in the pool any longer as it's a USB 2.0 drive and way too slow.  This could take quite some time to remove a 2TB USB 2.0 drive so I hate to have the server down totally during this process.  But if it's the only way....

 

[Christopher (Drashna) 608]

When you remove the drive, it sets the pool as "read only", so you can't write to it.  But you can still access the pool during this time.

However, because it is read only, any thing that relies on altering data will fail, such as client backups. But media streaming should work fine during this time. However, because one or more drives maybe written to during the removal process, it may make the system laggy.

 

 

If you want though, you could use the "File Placement Limiter" balancer to move the data off the drive in question, and once that's done, remove that drive from the pool immediately. And since there should be no pooled data after it's "balanced" the data, it should take minutes (if not seconds) to remove it from the pool.

[580guy 1]

Thanks so much for  your reply.  Just what I needed to know.  I may try the "File Placement Limiter" to move the data off the drive first, and simplify the removal from the pool. 

 

Thanks again.