New to StableBit Drivepool Quesiton regarding copy or move?

[bigbirdtrucker]

My pool size is 54tb with freespace of 18tb (all drives contain data)

I'm going to enable duplication for one copy of each drive once I add enough new drives to cover the space needed for that (in my case an additional 36TB, correct?)

I read on the forum of someone who moved their data from the original location to the hidden Poolpart folder (on that same drive) (called seeding) in order to see the files already in the pool. Do you recommend doing this?

Should I be copying or moving my files into the pooled drive? 

If I do move my files to the hidden Poolpart directory from the same drive... are there risks if I then remove the drive later? Such as would the files then be erased form disk if I move the files to the poolpart folder on the same drive - for each drive with the intention of seeing the files in the pool?

When I add drives to the pool that contain data I rad that stablebit drivepool doesnt modify those files. Am I correct to assume that even without moving the files to the poolpart folder from the same drive that the files that are on the drive at the time of creating the pool are indeed already in the pool (yet not visible)?

Is it true that when duplication is enabled that drivepool will place my files across several of my drives which have ample space? While I understand the benefits of leaving my files in place on the origin drive....those files are automatically part of the pool when added right? Even though it took literally zero time to add them to the pool with over 30tb on the drives combined? How will I know which files are on which drive when it comes time to recover from a lost disk for instance? Is there a reason that the pooled drive appears empty when drives with data are added to it?

 

Do I need to have my files visible on the pool (i.e. moving the files to the poolpart dir on the same drive for each drive in order to let snapraid see my pool and protect it with parity?

 

[Shane]

Enabling duplication for your entire pool will default to doubling the used space of your pool. So yes, if you had 36TB of unduplicated files in the pool, enabling the default duplication (x2) would result in those files using 72TB of space (assuming you had that much space available). To answer a later question in your post: if for example you had  drives A, B, C and D and you had a file on B (inside the PoolPart folder), enabling duplication x2 will put that file also on either A or C or D.

Adding a drive to a pool will NOT put any pre-existing data on that drive into the pool (which is why the pool still looks empty when you add a used drive to it; it's only making use of the free space of that drive, it's not automatically adding files from it). Any pre-existing data will NOT be touched, remaining where it is. You have to move that data yourself if you want it in the pool.

It's fine to move pre-existing data on a drive directly into that drive's hidden PoolPart folder to get it quickly into the pool; you just have to be careful to avoid accidentally overlapping anything already in the pool (e.g. on other drives) that has the same folder/file naming. To avoid that accidentally happening, I suggest creating a unique folder (e.g. maybe use that drive's serial number as the folder name) inside each PoolPart and moving your data into that if you're worried; once you've done that for all the pre-used drives you're adding to the pool you can then move them where you want in the pool normally.

If you're moving data directly into the hidden PoolPart folder, after you've finished you should also tell DrivePool to re-measure that pool (in the GUI, click Manage Pool -> Re-measure...) so that it can "see" how much data is on each drive in the pool. This helps it perform any balancing accurately.

If you use DrivePool's "Remove" function to remove a drive from the pool, the data inside that drive's PoolPart folder will be moved from that drive to other drives in the Pool as part of the operation. Any data on that drive that is outside of that drive's PoolPart folder will NOT be touched (because that data wasn't in the pool).

DrivePool doesn't keep a record of which files are on which drives in the pool. You would need to keep your own records for that.

Regarding using SnapRAID with DrivePool, #1 you should turn off (or be very careful with) DrivePool's balancing, #2 if you're only going to be using the drives for DrivePool with no data outside the poolparts then I suggest using the PoolPart folders as SnapRAID's mount points as per this post. Your mileage may vary however.