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Thinking of purchasing..

psykix

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psykix Advanced Member

psykix

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I'm about to give this a whirl for the 30 day trial, but have a few questions which I also asked on the Homeservershow forum.

 

I'm currently using Windows 2012 R2 Essentials. Which version should I be downloading? Just the normal one?

 

At the moment I have 4x4Tb drives in a Storage Space with parity. I've come to the conclusion that I can probably run with no parity since all that is on the drives is media for Plex, and hopefully the Drivepool Scanner will give me fair warning about impending doom! I do have Photos/Home Videos, but they are also backed up into OneDrive.

 

I have OneDrive Personal and also a OneDrive for Business account. At the moment, my iPhone backs up to my OneDrive personal storage because the personal app integrates nicely with the iphone and auto uploads the photos as they are taken. I'm not sure if your cloud product could offer me something to integrate with all that or not?

 

None of the drives in the Storage Space are reporting SMART info, and I'm not sure if that's because of Storage Spaces or not at the moment until I get all the data off and break it up into individual drives again. I'm running a Gen8 Microserver and using the onboard B120i controller with each drive configured as a separate RAID 0 array (to ensure that I don't get the fan speed problems associated with running AHCI).

 

I think that's all my questions for now! Apologies!

 

Cheers :-)

 


Oh, I did have one more question!

 

If I lose a drive, is there any way to work out what was on it?

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Christopher (Drashna) Advanced Member

Christopher (Drashna)

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Welcome!

 

If you're using Windows Server 2012 R2 Essentials, then the only version that works for that system is StableBit DrivePool 2.X (2.1.1.561 is the latest stable version).

Just download it, and then run it on the server directly. 

 

 

As for StableBit CloudDrive, we do store everything in a proprietary format (well, it's raw disk data, unless you've encrypted it). So it wouldn't necessarily integrate in a way that's accessible on your other devices. 

 

 

As for SMART info, there are a couple of utilities that can grab the SMART data from the Storage Spaces disk, as long as the drive controller allows it. However, most utilities don't, because of a drastic API change in Windows 8/Server 2012 and up (it hides the disk from the normal API used before these OS's). 

As for the controller itself, StableBit Scanner may be able to get the SMART data, but it may require advanced options to do so. Once you have the disks removed from Storage Spaces, let us know if you're not able to access the SMART data.

 

 

As for a missing disk, no, we dont' keep a list of what was on the drive (this would be fairly resource intensive, and we wanted to avoid heavy resource usage).  There are several methods on how to do this (command line, "fv++", or any integrity/inventory software).   Alternatively, this is part of why we heavily recommend using duplication. While it is 1:1 file based mirror, and uses up a lot more disk space..... If a drive fails, it is literally as simple as removing the disk from the pool. The software will then recheck all of the files and reduplicate the files as needed. In the meanwhile, you can still access the entire pool, without any issues.

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psykix Advanced Member

psykix

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Thanks for the reply.

 

I don't want to go 1:1 mirror, because quite simply the data that's on the drives is not valuable enough to invest in another 3 drives (which is what it would require) plus the controller and external enclosure that would require!

 

I've come around to thinking that I can afford to lose a drive if it happens - hopefully scanner will give me at least some preemptive warning, but if not it's not a huge problem.

 

I'm still copying data off on to a multitude of smaller drives so that I can break up the Storage Spaces pool!

 

The scanner already picked up 173 errors on one of those drives which I suspected was a bit flaky, so a good omen so far :-)

 

I can use folder level duplication presumably for say photos and home movies, plus they are also in OneDrive so I'd be covered on multiple bases there - that stuff I cannot afford to lose!

 

The rest of the data is media, so whilst I would be inconvenienced if I lost it, it is actually recoverable with a little time and effort.

 

Cheers!


Thinking about it, I think if I lost a drive, I could get the missing files info from Plex so again, not too big a problem.

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Christopher (Drashna) Advanced Member

Christopher (Drashna)

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Well, I definitely understand not wanting to duplicate everything, especially if it's a lot of fairly easily replaceable files.

 

Though, even if Plex does list the missing files, IIRC, it doesn't do so in an easy to view list. 

 

 

And I'm sorry to hear about the errors on one of those drives, but glad to hear that StableBit Scanner is already showing it's worth!

 

And yes, you can set the duplication per folder, as you want (even higher than just 2x, if you're especially concerned).

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daveyboy37 Advanced Member

daveyboy37

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Thanks for the reply.

 

I don't want to go 1:1 mirror, because quite simply the data that's on the drives is not valuable enough to invest in another 3 drives (which is what it would require) plus the controller and external enclosure that would require!

 

I've come around to thinking that I can afford to lose a drive if it happens - hopefully scanner will give me at least some preemptive warning, but if not it's not a huge problem.

 

I'm still copying data off on to a multitude of smaller drives so that I can break up the Storage Spaces pool!

 

The scanner already picked up 173 errors on one of those drives which I suspected was a bit flaky, so a good omen so far :-)

 

I can use folder level duplication presumably for say photos and home movies, plus they are also in OneDrive so I'd be covered on multiple bases there - that stuff I cannot afford to lose!

 

The rest of the data is media, so whilst I would be inconvenienced if I lost it, it is actually recoverable with a little time and effort.

 

Cheers!

Thinking about it, I think if I lost a drive, I could get the missing files info from Plex so again, not too big a problem.

 

 

I also do the fly by the seat of my pants method..Everything ctitical is backed up three fold or more... If its a few TB of movies then c'est la vie.

This approach may change though when the 8TB drives come down in price a little more.

 

As for DrivePool itself... well (as another Plex user), the best endorsement I can give is that I have been using it since the very early beta stages. 

As someone who used to be extremely active on here I just don't have the time any more. BUT I don't need to be because it just works!!!

Im well over two years of not having touched my server (windows updates aside) in fact I actually feel guilty that I guess I just take DrivePool for granted. It sits there silently in the notification area doing its stuff.  :)

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psykix Advanced Member

psykix

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Very impressed so far - switched everything to AHCI mode so that I can get SMART reporting.

 

I do have another question though! Since installing Drivepool, a drive letter appears to have been added to the system reserved 349Mb partition that Windows Server 2012 R2 creates on installation.

 

Is that required? Can I remove it?

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Christopher (Drashna) Advanced Member

Christopher (Drashna)

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j

 

Very impressed so far - switched everything to AHCI mode so that I can get SMART reporting.

 

I do have another question though! Since installing Drivepool, a drive letter appears to have been added to the system reserved 349Mb partition that Windows Server 2012 R2 creates on installation.

 

Is that required? Can I remove it?

That's kind of weird that it's happened, actually.

 

But yes, you can safely remove the drive letter from that volume.

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psykix Advanced Member

psykix

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Well since everything on my 4x4Tb drives is media and is ultimately replaceable (albeit with some time and effort!) then I came to the conclusion that having an extra 3.6Tb of available space at the expense of a drive failure is acceptable.

 

I'm impressed with the scanner. When I copied the data off the Storage Spaces array so that I could set up DrivePool instead, I had to use a multitude of small 1Tb and 500Gb drives that I had laying around.

 

I knew at least one of the 1Tb drives was acting strangely (it worked but seemd a bit "odd" at times) and as soon as I plugged it in, I got an email from the Scanner reporting S.M.A.R.T. issues. Therefore it seems to be doing its job.

 

Given the above, hopefully anything other than an instant complete drive failure should give me time to get the data off any drive which begins to show problems.

 

Also, as you mention if I do have data I want backing up then I can just dupe those folders.

 

All good for me, because Storage Spaces is awful - I deleted a load of stuff, and it doesn't rebalance, so you end up with uneven drives. They are not readable individually either. My other option was to add a P222 controller card to my Gen8, but that's a pretty expensive option and would cost at least twice what I paid for the Gen8 itself!

 

I can highly recommend Drivepool and Scanner from what I've seen so far :-)

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Christopher (Drashna) Advanced Member

Christopher (Drashna)

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Well since everything on my 4x4Tb drives is media and is ultimately replaceable (albeit with some time and effort!) then I came to the conclusion that having an extra 3.6Tb of available space at the expense of a drive failure is acceptable.

 

To be blunt, I cringe every time somebody says this.  I was the same way... especially with the fact that I have about 20TBs of media (it's probably closer to 25TBs right now).  I lost a drive, and lost a huge chunk of my media.  It was a royal pain to recover all of it.

 

This is even using apps like SickBeard and Plex to manage and list missing files.  Some of the stuff you can only find in torrents ... that are poorly seeded (if at all).  Some of it, I had to get from friends. Some of it ... I just deleted because I couldn't find the missing files.  

 

Yes, it is simple to recover ... but having the data duplicated means that all you have to do is remove the missing disk, and DrivePool will rebuild the duplication for you.  No mess, no fuss. 

 

 

All good for me, because Storage Spaces is awful - I deleted a load of stuff, and it doesn't rebalance, so you end up with uneven drives. They are not readable individually either. My other option was to add a P222 controller card to my Gen8, but that's a pretty expensive option and would cost at least twice what I paid for the Gen8 itself!

 

I can highly recommend Drivepool and Scanner from what I've seen so far :-)

 

As for the controller card, if you ever need more drives, look into "SAS" cards. HighPoint has a few nice cards (though expensive). Otherwise, LSI cards are really, really good.

 

Also, you can find these cards for cheap on ebay and the like, as large companies will sell them by the 100's or more, to recoup upgrade costs. :)

 

 

And I'm glad to hear that you're already very happy with our products and willing to recommend them to others!

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psykix Advanced Member

psykix

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The Gen8 Microserver needs a P222 so that it's reported to the iLO properly.

 

I wouldn't really want to fudge it :-)

 

These 4 drives were originally in a 4 bay QNAP using RAID 5 but the QNAP is ARM based and very slow, so I migrated to the Gen8.

 

If I duplicate everything, then I need 4 more drives - which means I also need a controller card and an external bay. Too much expense when what I have now will last me for several years since I have 6Tb free. It's just not worth all that expense to cover the loss of one drive. To be honest, if I was looking at parity then I'd have gone the hardware raid 5 route, so that I only had 25% overhead. I know that brings its own problems, and I've had RAID 5 arrays in my datacentre which lost 2 drives and required restores from backups.

 

Sooo... you're not gonna convince me to spend out all that money on duplication! hehehe!

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