What happens when a drive is missing for a long time?

[mr_yellow]

Hi Guys,

 

so just some background, I have DP running on WS2012R2Essentials and I have 8 drives in 2 enclosures (the main computer + an esata external enclosure).  

 

During a power outage, the main computer was rebooted but the enclosure remained powered off.  Now DP is saying all the drives from the enclosure are missing.

 

I'm not too worried as in a few hours, I'll be back home and be able to power on the enclosure, but here comes the question...

 

What happens to the duplicated files during this time?  Will DP start duplicating the files across the remaining 4 visible drives?  Is so, when does it start that?   What happens when the drives come back online and there are now 3 copies on 3 drives?  

 

Also, as a side note, is there a provision in the duplication algorithm that makes sure duplicate files are stored on separate enclosures/locations (or at the very least different controllers)?  I'm just imagining my enclosure killing 4 out of the 8 drives and I'll still lose duplicated files that were duplicated only on the drives in the enclosure.    If there isn't anything like this, may I recommend this as a future feature enhancement?  

 

Thanks,

[Christopher (Drashna)]

Nothing. 

 

 

Specifically, any time that you have a missing disk, StableBit DrivePool puts the pool into a "read only" mode to ensure that NOTHING changes (at least not because of us or through the pool drive).  This is specifically to prevent any sorts of issues that could be caused by the duplication or balancing engines (or from modifying existing files that are duplicated).

 

So, no duplication or balancing has occurred or will occur until the external enclosure is reattached or the missing drives are removed from the pool.

 

 

 

As for placement, by default we make sure that duplicate copies are not placed on the same physical disk (in the case of multiple partitions on the same disk).  We don't do anything more complicated than that right now. (so we don't check the controller or type).

 

However, we do want to introduce a "duplication grouping" feature that would accomplish that (albeit, manually). 

But, in the meanwhile, if you don't mind micromanaging the pool, you can use the file placement rules to do this. Select a folder, and then select two disks. It will make sure that the copies end up on only those two disks, if possible.

[mr_yellow]

Cool.  Thanks for the explanation.  I didn't realize there was a read only mode.  This puts my fears to rest.

 

Also congrats on the clouddrive.  Looks interesting! 

[Christopher (Drashna)]

You are very welcome.

And we do try to do everything we can to ensure that your data is safe. So the read only mode only made sense for this sort of situation. 

 

 

And thanks! We hope that people like it (we realize that not everyone will, but hopefully a majority will!).