hauge48 Posted May 11, 2015 Share Posted May 11, 2015 Hello, I seem to have messed up things here and don't understand what is going on, not to speak of how to get out of the mess. I have about 30TB of space and 8 TB free. Everything is duplicated. It started when I extended the volumes in Disk Management to make use of unallocated space. The volumes are solely for data, so I ignored the warning that I could not boot from them after extending. The volumes were transformed from Primary partition to Simple volumes. DP reports the disks as missing. I thought I just remove the disks, reformat them and bring them back into the pool. Pressing "Remove" - without the shift removed the disk from the list and nothing more happened. I removed yet another missing disk and the same happens. So there I am, with 2 disks not showing in the list and another three reported as missing. DP reports the pool as Unduplicated 1,5 MB and Other 22 TB. Only files located on the two drives that I "removed" are unaccessable, otherwise DP sees files located on the missing drives, although it considers that nothing is duplicated. Please, I need some advice here on how to bring back the "removed" disks back into the the disk list and how to handle the missing disk situation. Finn Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
0 hauge48 Posted May 15, 2015 Author Share Posted May 15, 2015 Everything is in place now. Thank you so much. If you will indulge me: what is meant by seeding, unseeding, reseeding a disk? English is not my first language and I only know seeding from the torrent world. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
0 Christopher (Drashna) Posted May 11, 2015 Share Posted May 11, 2015 Check Disk Management (run "diskmgmt.msc") Do the disks show up as "Dynamic" (instead of Basic)? If so.... that's the problem, and not an easy one to solve. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
0 hauge48 Posted May 11, 2015 Author Share Posted May 11, 2015 Dead on. Dynamic, not Basic as the rest of the disks. I make backup of my C:drive weekly with Acronis. Will a restore of last week's backup be the easiest way out? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
0 Christopher (Drashna) Posted May 11, 2015 Share Posted May 11, 2015 Are you using Acronis to backup the pool or the disks in the pool? If not, then this won't help you, as the disk's themselves have been "altered". And unfortunately, there is no easy solution for this. Converting a basic disk to dynamic is easy, but there is no way back without deleting all the volumes on the disk..... There are tools that can do this, reportedly, which may be worth looking into: http://www.disk-partition.com/dynamic-disk/free-convert-dynamic-disk-to-basic.html However, just a warning .... any tool like this can damage the drives and the data on them. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
0 Umfriend Posted May 12, 2015 Share Posted May 12, 2015 Apparantly, EaseUS can do this to too. I have never done that but it has helped me shrink partitions where Windows wouldn't and appears solid to me. http://www.easeus.com/partition-manager-software/change-dynamic-disk-to-basic-disk.html Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
0 Christopher (Drashna) Posted May 12, 2015 Share Posted May 12, 2015 Ah, yes, the EaseUS Partition Master software can do that as well. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
0 hauge48 Posted May 14, 2015 Author Share Posted May 14, 2015 I have used EaseUS Partition Master to convert from 4 out of 5 dynamic disks to basic. DrivePool sees them and data seem intact. The fifth disk is formatted as GPT (3TB) and on requesting converson of that disk I get the following message: EFI/MSR partition will be lost after conversion if they exist on GPT disk. Do you want to continue? In Windows Disk Management there is no mentioning of such partitions - but if removed will that have any impact on DP operation? Also, Disk Management reports the converted disks as Logical drives, not Primary Partition as the rest - does this have any impact on DP? The four converted disks are properly reported in Disk Management with correct Volume ID, but there is also 4 drives reported without Volume ID and described as Simple Dynamic with status "Failed". My two options are to Reactivate and Delete. The proper choice seems to be delete, or should I leave as is? I removed two disks when I started this mess, they now appear as Non-Pooled. They still have the data. How do I get them into the pool again without losing data? That was a lot of questions, so (for my) clarity I sum up: 1. Problem for DP with missing EFI/MSR partition in GPT disk? 2. Disk are logical drives. Problem? 3. What to do with the failing (ex dynamic) volumes 4. How do I get the Non-Pooled disks into the Pool without losing data? I really appreciate the assistance here. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
0 Christopher (Drashna) Posted May 15, 2015 Share Posted May 15, 2015 As for the MSR/EFI partition, that should be okay, IIRC. They're hidden partitions. And DrivePool should see and use the Logical partitions just fine. As for the disks without Volume IDs... well, all volumes should have an ID, it's weird that it doesn't. Try rebooting and see if that helps. As for the non-pooled disks, add them to the pool. It doesn't format the disk or touch it. And then seed it. http://wiki.covecube.com/StableBit_DrivePool_Q4142489 If this is for the dynamic disks, move the data off of the drive... and delete the partitions. Then add it to the pool. Unfortunately, there isn't a good alternative to this, if you're not able to convert the disks. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
0 hauge48 Posted May 15, 2015 Author Share Posted May 15, 2015 Almost there, I think. The EaseUS tool worked after some guidance from tech support. DP has taken the disks into the pool directly, but also report 3 of them in the Non-Pooled list. Trying to add them into the pool gives error about adding the same disk into the pool, reasonably so. I also get a duplication warning, but DP says it can sort that out. What to do with the disks that both are and are not in the pool at the same time? (Heard of Schrødinger's cat?). And you were right: the failing drives were probably some left-overs from the conversion. The have been removed from Disk Management now. Finn Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
0 Christopher (Drashna) Posted May 15, 2015 Share Posted May 15, 2015 As for the DrivePool issues, reset the settings: http://wiki.covecube.com/StableBit_DrivePool_Q2299585B This may fix the issue. If not, then it's a bit more difficult (basically it's unseeding and reseeding the disks). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
0 Christopher (Drashna) Posted May 16, 2015 Share Posted May 16, 2015 You're very welcome. As for "seeding", well, I believe it was initially a farming reference... so placing the seeds where they're going to grow. Or something like this. However, as for seeding and reseeding the Pool: http://wiki.covecube.com/StableBit_DrivePool_Q4142489 It's basically placing the files into the correct location for the Pool to use it (see the correlation there). Unseeding it, would be to reverse the process, moving the files out of the PoolPart folder and into the root of the drive. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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hauge48
Hello,
I seem to have messed up things here and don't understand what is going on, not to speak of how to get out of the mess.
I have about 30TB of space and 8 TB free. Everything is duplicated.
It started when I extended the volumes in Disk Management to make use of unallocated space. The volumes are solely for data,
so I ignored the warning that I could not boot from them after extending. The volumes were transformed from Primary partition to
Simple volumes.
DP reports the disks as missing. I thought I just remove the disks, reformat them and bring them back into the pool. Pressing
"Remove" - without the shift removed the disk from the list and nothing more happened.
I removed yet another missing disk and the same happens. So there I am, with 2 disks not showing in the list and another three reported as missing.
DP reports the pool as Unduplicated 1,5 MB and Other 22 TB. Only files located on the two drives that I "removed" are unaccessable, otherwise DP
sees files located on the missing drives, although it considers that nothing is duplicated.
Please, I need some advice here on how to bring back the "removed" disks back into the the disk list and how to handle the missing disk situation.
Finn
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