Large portion of new drive "unusable for duplication"?

[hansolo77]

Ok, so as we all know by now (I hope) I'm working on rebuilding my OS.  Before the install, I did a safety backup "just in case" of my data.  I removed drives from the pool, and made copies of the data to them.  When I installed the new OS, and DrivePool, I was very happy to see that it did work as advertised (instantly recognized the DrivePool, verified data, and was good to go).  So I went ahead and re-partitioned the drives I had made a backup to and re-added them back into the pool.  It looks like it went ok, but my DrivePool is reporting a very LARGE portion is "unusable for duplication".  It appears to be (almost) the entire partition of the 4tb I added (I only have 1x4tb drive).  I'm afraid that if I remove the drive and repartition it again, the same thing might happen.  Is this normal behavior?  When I added the drive, it's been working on re-balancing the pool since my pool was 99% full after removing the drives for backup.

 

[Christopher (Drashna)]

Unusable for duplication: the amount of space that can't be used to duplicate your files, because of a combination of the different sizes of your pooled drives, the different sizes of your files in the pool and the space consumed by the "Other" stuff. DrivePool minimises this as best it can, based on the settings and priorities of your Balancers

 

However, it does appear that you have an unusually large amount here.

 

Have you made any changes to the the balancer settings?

Do you ahve StableBit Scanner installed on the system (and if so, are all of the drives healthy)?

 

And could you grab logs for the system?

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

[hansolo77]

I haven't made any changes.  I know some people have specific rules setup, etc.  But this is just from a bare metal install, OS, then DrivePool, then re-add the drive.  I did install another new trial version of Scanner and it has been working on doing the drive scans since last night.  I do notice, however, that the "unusable" portion has since shrunk down to 1.68tb compared to the 3.12tb it was before.  The system as of this moment is still attempting to balance, and Scanner is still checking drives.

 

I can provide the log if you want, but it is still processing.  Should I wait and see what it looks like when it is done first?  The log link you provided looks like it would only be helpful if there was an error, but I'm not getting any.  Let me know.

[Christopher (Drashna)]

Wait til everything finishes processing. Once that's done, see if it's still having issues.

 

If it is, then try installing and activating the "Disk Usage Equalizer" balancer and see if that helps:

https://stablebit.com/DrivePool/Plugins

[hansolo77]

It looks like it self corrected itself.  Strangely, one of the drives in the pool had developed 2 unreadable sectors.  After I ran another scan on the drive and attempted to recover, it fixed itself.  Not sure that would cause the +3tb to be unusable, it wasn't even on the same drive, plus the 2 sectors was equal to 3kb.  Anyway, yeah it looks like it is ok now.  Gonna watch it though.  The balancer is still working though, I installed Lights-Out and the computer has actually been off most of the time.

[Christopher (Drashna)]

Could very well be related to the balancing, actually.

 

However, if you're using Lights Out, then we have a recommended configuration change to make:

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

Set the "DrivePool_RunningFile" value.  Then add this to LightsOut. 

This will prevent LightsOut from sleeping while we're actively running a task (duplication, balancing, etc). 

[hansolo77]

I actually tried that when I had WHS 2011 installed.  It never actually created the file, so even though I had Lights Out configured to watch for it, it never found it.  I will certainly try again now that I'm running WSE.  Does the file need to exist in the pool?  If not, I suppose I could have it create it on the desktop so I know it's there.

[Christopher (Drashna)]

The folder needs to exist, but aside from that, it can be located anywhere.

 

If you're having issues getting it to work, then let us know.

 

And to clarify, the file is ONLY created if StableBit DrivePool is actively running a task (such as balancing, duplicating, etc). Not just if it's running.

[hansolo77]

It's definitely not working.  I went to the folder path C:\Program Files\StableBit\DrivePool\ and configured DP to create a file "DP_RUNNING" and then configured Light's Out to look in that specific path for that specific file, but it never works.  I actually opened up the path and watched while I forced a Re-Measure but DP never created the file.  I also had done this while DP was performing other stuff, like verifying duplication and balancing. 

 

Actually, now that I think about it, maybe I need to put quotes around the path since there is a space in it.  Couldn't I alleviate all the problem and just have it create the file in the root of C:\?  I'll have to experiment more with it later.

[Christopher (Drashna)]

Tested, and confirms that it works.

 

Specifically, I used this:

<setting name="DrivePool_RunningFile" serializeAs="String">
  <value>C:\Program Files\StableBit\DrivePool\RUNNING</value>
</setting>

Though, the setting is named "RunningFile_FileName" in the 1.X verison, so you need to make sure you use the right value.

[hansolo77]

I believe I'm using v2.1.1.561.  Maybe it doesn't like my file name.  I do have it using quotes though, let me try removing them.

 

I just tried doing a re-measure again, and it's still not creating the file.  I backed up to the StableBit folder and found that the DrivePool subfolder was read-only.  I tried removing that attribute, and set the security of the folder to EVERYONE with Full Access.  Still doesn't create the file.

 

Just to verify, we're talking about this file correct?

C:\Program Files\StableBit\DrivePool\DrivePool.Service.exe.default.config

 

Is there a service I need to restart maybe to let the new config take effect?

 

EDIT - Restarting the service didn't help either.

[Christopher (Drashna)]

Remove the "default" from the name. It should look like 'DrivePool.Service.exe.config'. 

If you haven't been removing the "default" part, that would be why it wasn't working. 

[hansolo77]

Strange... that's how it was named when I entered the folder...  Actually, I have a few files with the .default on them.  I renamed them all.

 

Started re-measure again, nothing happened.

 

Restarted Service, YAY IT WORKS!!

 

I never recreated anything, so I don't know why they would be named with .default.  But having that on there certainly made a difference.

[Christopher (Drashna)]

Strange... that's how it was named when I entered the folder...  Actually, I have a few files with the .default on them.  I renamed them all.

 

Started re-measure again, nothing happened.

 

Restarted Service, YAY IT WORKS!!

 

I never recreated anything, so I don't know why they would be named with .default.  But having that on there certainly made a difference.

The default files are there, because the install creates them.  They're sample files, basically.  

 

Though, if you do double check the link, we do explicitly mention removing the "default" from the file name.

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

 

But regardless, I'm glad to hear it's working properly now.

[hansolo77]

I stand corrected.  Thanks