Removing folder duplication-what is supposed to happen?

[NickM]

I ran out of space on a pool, and decided to remove the  File protection >  pool duplication and performance > real-time duplication options.

 

The Drivepool dashboard seems to be stuck in "Measuring". It displayed Duplicated/Unduplicated/Other storage figures ("duplicated" changed from 4TB down to 20GB, then went back up to 4TB again, then "Other" went down, "Unduplicated" went up), but doesn't seem to have freed up any space.

 

 

There are 3x 2TB and 1 x 3 TB drives in the pool.

 

Could you please explain the expected behaviour of the software when folder duplication is removed, because what the GUI displays makes no sense at all!

 

Edit: 15 hours later, and after some manually deleting some files from the pool I have SOME free space.

 

But all the duplication options are OFF, and yet 95% of the pool size appears to be still duplicated. How do I get free space back?

[Christopher (Drashna)]

Remeasure the pool. It should trigger a duplication pass, which should unduplicate the files.

 

But if you don't mind me asking, why not add another drive?

[NickM]

Ahhhhhh! OK, it remeasured overnight and my free space went from 800kb to 4.1 TB. It seemed as if ...nothing was happening for a very long time.

 

Yes, I could add another drive but I've maxed out the capacity of the HP N40L microserver and at the moment, can't afford more internal drives. The pool contents have been manually backed up to the pile of older external drives sitting in the cupboard. No optimal, I know.

 

As an aside, what is a good enclosure for, say, more than 10 drives? Are there any enclosures than could take older IDE drives?

[Christopher (Drashna)]

Well, if you want, install the latest beta build, it handles some of the measuring stuff better. SHould help prevent it from happening again in the future.

 

And glad that remeasuring definitely fixed the issue for you.

 

 

As for the MicroServer ... ah, I had a feeling it was something like that.

 

Do you have the PCI Express card slot free still?  If so, have you considered something like the HighPoint RocketRAID 2722?  With 2 of the external breakout cables, you can 

 

 

As for enclosures with 10+ drives? That depends on what your'e willing to spend.  It gets real expensive real quick. But basically, you would want to look into "SAS" stuff.  There are a few threads on here about that, but I can also help point you in the direction. 

But that's why I mentioned the HighPoint card, you should be able to attach ~8 eSATA enclosures to the card, with 4-5 drives each (maybe more, not sure, can't find definitive info).  It would be a good starting point.

 

 

That or look for an LSI card with external ports, and eBay or the like for SAS Expander cases.

 

 

 

As for IDE?  Finding support for IDE at all anymore is hard.  

You can find external enclosures that support them, though. But usually, it's one drive enclosures. And USB connectivity.

[NickM]

Thank you for the information! I ran a fairly vanilla microserver and hadn't explored all the expansion options yet. Especially esata!

[Christopher (Drashna)]

You're very welcome.

 

If you do go eSATA, just avoid Silicon Image based cards. (they're "unreliable", at best)