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Disk turned raw - any way to save pool


spork

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One of my external USB3 pools turned raw on me, I do have partial backups but is there any chance of saving the pool ?

 

Edit: I do have one non-raw disk in the pool connected via SATA if that helps. If nothing can be done I will be going back to MS storage spaces as I cant afford random wipe outs like this, though your drive scanner tool is quite nice does it work alright with storage spaces ? I'd still like to use it as my early warning indicator if possible.

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Have you checked nothing is wrong with the drive first before ditching drive pool and if the same thing happens with storage spaces wouldn't you lose the data also. Drive pool doesn't just alter a drive to raw infact I don't think any software would without it being told to.

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The drivepool guys to be fair warned this could happen and the system is really meant for SATA, started getting a delete file error and ran a duplication check on the pool but the check seemed to stall after a long while going nowhere. Shut PC down after reboot four of the five drives are in a USB3 enclosure drivepool says they are all missing, disk manager shows them as raw.

 

Storage spaces is a big pain in the ass in terms of speed and flexability but it never had this problem.

 

It's not the end of the world as I have a good chunk of the data backed up. The  drives are all brand new, it could be some combo of the HDD/enclosure or some other odditiy, I actually have two pools in operation and the second pool is working fine no problems at all though.

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First, I'm sorry to hear about the drive, as that is never a pleasant experience.

 

As for the pool, once you remove the disk, the pool should return to working just fine. In fact, after doing so, it will recheck the entire pool and reduplicate files as needed.  

If you only had duplicates on the external USB drive, then you should be fine, and haven't actually lost anything!

 

But if the drive had unduplicated data on it, that's lost, unless you had a backup of it, or can get it back via data recovery.

EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard, Recuva, iCare, or TestDisk may be able to recovery the partitions or the files from the drive. 

 

 

 

While this can happen to any disk, USB drives are particularly susceptible to this. If the drive was writing to the partition table when the disk disconnected (ether intentionally, accidentally, or periodically), this can damage the partition table and cause this to happen.  

USB drives ... well they're really easy to bump and disconnect the drive. 

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I am trying to access the data on a drive form my DrivePool.  I placed the drive in an external enclosure and fired it up - the drive is recognized by Windows fine and I can see the PoolPartxxxx folder - but when I try to open the folder I get a message:

 

Window Title:  "Location is not available"

Window text: It lists the PoolPart folder name and then says "is not accessible" - the next line says "The Parameter is incorrect"

 

So I googled and found nothing related to DrivePool with that error - some posts noted to run Chkdsk - but when I do that I get an error "The type of File system is RAW - CHKDSK is not available for RAW drives"

 

So I'm thoroughly confused. Windows is NOT asking me to format or giving any other error - I just can't access the PoolPart folder?

 

Help?  I need to rename the PoolPart folder so I can add this drive to a different server and then migrate the data over.  I don't want to end up with a second pool on the second server.

 

-------

Update - I decided to connect the external drive to my PC using an eSATA cable (I was using USB) and the problem is gone!  I don't understand what the difference is?  I've used these external enclosures with DrivePool drives and USB or eSATA before with no issues.  The Drive is a 4TB WD NAS variety - but don't think that would make a difference?

 

I can open the PoolPartxxx folder now and get to the share folders/files fine... very odd.

 

Anybody have any ideas why this would have happened with a USB cable?  

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I'm not sure why this happens but I've had it happen to me 2 times in the last 2 or 3 weeks or so on different 4TB drives.

I have 8 drives in an enclosure connected via USB3 cables.

 

In my case I'm running DrivePool, Scanner and CloudDrive. 

What has happened to me is that the UI freezes up (VNC, RDP or console). I can fix this most of the time doing a loggoff /server:name from a different computer then loggin back in.  Once in a while, I'll have to do a shutdown command from another computer.  In each case of having a RAW disk issue I've noticed the CloudDrive service won't shut down and after 20 to 30 minutes I'm forced to hardboot the computer.

 

For me, there is no activity that I'm aware going on with any of the drives in the 8 bay USB enclosure.  I have no balancing running and my CloudDrive cache is setup on a different drive connected via SATA.

 

I've not had this problem prior to installing Scanner, DrivePool, CloudDrive and I'm about to start uninstalling the suite starting with CloudDrive to see if the problems (freezes and hang-up rebooting) go away.

I'm presently doing a restore of a drive at present using SnapRaid.  I've previously run in JBOD and Windows Storage Spaces and never experienced either of these issues.

 

Carlo

 

PS It's not unheard of for USB disks to go RAW but this will usually only happen when the drive is in a write state of the partition table that doesn't finish and you have a power failure or something.  I'm seeing more and more of this happening with DrivePool and it seems excessive to me.

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I don't use ANY USB with my Home Server - just an external Drive enclosure that holds 4 drives - connected to the server with an eSATA cable.  The server sees all 4 drives individually (port multiplier enabled).  So I've never had any issues on the server.  In the past I've been able to drop a server drive in an external enclosure and connect to my laptop either via USB or eSATA with no issues...so this error message I received last night was very weird.  Working fine now that I changed to the eSATA cable.

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Puulima,

 

you can't run a chkdsk on the Pool itself. It doesn't support that.

However, you should be able to run it on the disks in the pool.  

 

In fact, have you run Disk Management yet? If not, do so now (run "diskmgmt.msc").

See if any of the disks show up as RAW here. If they do, and they're not the pool drive, then that's the problem disk. 

If only the pool is showing up as RAW, then could you do this:

http://wiki.covecube.com/StableBit_DrivePool_2.x_Boot_Time_Log_Collection

 

If one of the pooled disks is showing up RAW, then it's a bit more complicated.  If everything was duplicated, then format the disk, remove the now "missing" disk from the pool, and re-add the newly formatted volume. It will then reduplicate the data automatically. 

 

 

As for why this could happen with a USB cable.... well, the USB specifications allow for occasional random disconnects of the device.  That's fine for short term storage. But for long term storage, these disconnects can cause corruption. If the disk is being written to when a disconnect happens, it will likely lose a chunk of that data. If that happens when the disk is updating the file system when this happens, it gets damaged and shows up as RAW.  That's why we generally recommend using SATA or eSATA drives for the pool.

 

 

@Carlo, if you're seeing this happen a lot, then the first thing I would check is the power.  If you're using a surge protector or power stripe, then try replacing it.  Otherwise, try using a UPS, as that may help.  

But yes, it's definitely unusual for Drivepool to cause it to happen more often, unless there is a lot of activity on the pool in general.

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