Scanner doesn't appear in WHS 2011 Dashboard?

[hansolo77]

I'm expirmenting with StableBit DrivePool and StableBit Scanner before I decide to buy it (thanks for having this offer available!).  When I installed the DrivePool program, it appeared in the Dashboard with no problem.  However, when I installed the Scanner, it never installed anything to the Dashboard.  It looks like the only way I can access this program directly is through a Remote Desktop to the server.  If this is the case, I don't know if I'll be using this software, as I already have HD-Sentinel running and it does pretty much the same thing.  I was hoping to have some form of Dashboard integration.  Is there something I missed in my installation, or a setting I need to enable?  Also, I'm using WHS 2011.

 

BTW, DrivePool is working great!  I appreciate it's function to not remove existing data.  That enabled me to have a backup of my old server's data prior to upgrading.  I know this isn't the right forum for that, but I just thought I'd mention it!

[Christopher (Drashna)]

I think you grabbed the wrong installer then.

 

There are two. One for "Windows Server Solutions" products (WHS2011, SBS2011E, WSS2008R2, WS2012E, WS2012R2E, etc), and one for other OS's.

The WSS installer uses a "WSSX" extension (Windows Server Solutions eXtension), and the other uses an EXE extension.

 

 

Either are fine, but you'd definitely want the WSSX one, as that is the one that appears in the dashboard.

Uninstall the current version (from the Control Panel), and then install this one:

http://dl.covecube.com/ScannerWhs2/beta/download/StableBit.Scanner_2.5.2.3100_BETA.wssx

 

Once you've installed that, you'll get the dashboard integration.

[hansolo77]

OK I will try this one tomorrow.  I'm in the process right now of restoring a 4tb drive's worth of data into the new storage pool, gonna take me another 11 hours or so.    Loving the DrivePool. 

 

One thing I noticed about the Scanner software (even though it wasn't the wssx one)... it seemed to be running very slow.  While I was configuring it and letting it run it's scans, it seemed to take an awful amount of time doing the scan on even a small 500gb drive.  Like 3 hours at least.  Is that typical behavior?  I have 12 drives in my system, and if it takes that long to run a scan on my SMALLEST drive, it would take forever to scan all of the drives.  And with a schedule of 30 days, it would be scanning the whole time.  Isn't it advertised that the Scanner uses a "fast" surface scan?  I dunno, maybe I misread it.

 

Thanks again for replying back.  I'll be in touch if I have any other issues or questions.

[Christopher (Drashna)]

For the pool, there is a "seeding" guide, which you may want to check out. It may make things quicker:

http://wiki.covecube.com/StableBit_DrivePool_Q4142489

 

 

As for StableBit Scanner, the surface scan can take a long while. It's reading each and every sector on the disk.  So, that's a slow process to start with, and may be slowed down by things such as the drives performance in general, or by disk access (since we throttle on disk access to prevent bottle necking the drive).  

 

Though, 3 hours for a 500GB drive does sound to be very slow, unfortunately.

I'd recommend running a "burst test" on the drive (right click on the drive, select the "Burst Test" option). Let that run for a while, and see what sort of speeds you get. If they're slower speed, that could account for the very long time to scan you're seeing. And if you're seeing errors during that test, it may indicate other issues.

 

 

Additionally, you can enable scanning multiple disks concurrently, if you want (this may also speed up the scan speed of individual disks, as well):

In the Scanner settings, open the throttling tab, and make sure the "Do not interfere with drives on the same controller" option is disabled.

Then, do this: http://wiki.covecube.com/StableBit_Scanner_Advanced_Settings

Find the "Scanner_ScanWithDirectIo" setting, and check that.  And then find the "Scanner_ScanMaximumConcurrent".

 

Restart the system, or manually restart the StableBit Scanner Service (run "services.msc", find the service, right click on it, and select "Restart").