Pool that only is powered on occasionally?

[gringott]

I haven't tried this yet, but I was wonder the ramifications of creating a pool that contains data that is only needed say once a month.

How would drive pool react to creating another pool, say with 4 drives, then during a shut down powering those drives off [i would use an external esata unit], then powering on.

 

Any serious issues beyond being reminded that those drives [or pool I guess] is missing?

 

 

Thanks.

[dbailey75]

I haven't tried this yet, but I was wonder the ramifications of creating a pool that contains data that is only needed say once a month.

How would drive pool react to creating another pool, say with 4 drives, then during a shut down powering those drives off [i would use an external esata unit], then powering on.

 

Any serious issues beyond being reminded that those drives [or pool I guess] is missing?

 

 

Thanks.

I'd also like to know the answer, I can confirm, after an OS rebuild and reattaching all drives back to the pool, and then removing them after a shut down, forgot to install my movies, rebooted, and drivepool didn't throw a single error about the pool no longer being attached. This would be great for the monthly backups, and thus providing a truly portable pool. 

[Shane]

Pools are independent of each other, so there should be no issues (other than, of course, DrivePool warning you that one of your pools is missing all of its drives). Edit: See Drashna's post below!

[Christopher (Drashna)]

Actually, if the pool is missing *all* of the drives, then DrivePool "won't know about it".  

Once you re-attach one or all of the disks, then it will "discover" it and remount it. Making it accessible again.

[Shane]

Does DrivePool remember the drive letter of an "absent" pool, or would that have to be manually corrected if/as needed?

[Arthur]

I have been doing this for a while.   With one Drivepool, I have 4 pools and 3 of these are using iSCSI disks on different PC's. Because I have configured each pool to only uses disk on a single PC, it is easy to seperate the pools.

 

As Drashna says if a complete pool is not available, Drivepool does not know about it, but as soon as one of the iSCSI PC's is powered up, the iSCSI link auto reconnects the disks in a pool, and the pool reappears. I use these iSCSI pools for archiving and backup. Prior to using iSCSI, I used eSATA to add external drives but at that time I did not have seperate pools so I cant confirm if these would behave the same, but I see no reason why not.

 

The pool contents are then immediately available, and the only impact I have seen is when a pool has been absent for a while it can take some time for Drivepool and Stablebit Scanner to catch up all the admin activities and some of the reporting information can take a time to be updated.

 

Arthur.

[dbailey75]

Does DrivePool remember the drive letter of an "absent" pool, or would that have to be manually corrected if/as needed?

in my case the drive letter of the  pool was not stored, it took on the next available drive letter in windows, so for back up that could be a pain. 

[Christopher (Drashna)]

It is supposed to remember the drive letter, but obviously that doesn't always happen.

And that is also part of why we recommend setting the drive letter for DrivePool manually, and to be something much farther down in the alphabet.

 

 

@Arthur, what software are you using for the iSCSI Target?

[gringott]

I don't use drive letters so sounds like this is a real possiblility for me. I will execute and report back after some testing.

Thank you.

[Arthur]

@drashna

 

iSCSI Target - I use the Microsoft iSCSI Target 3.3.

 

It is tricky to set up the first connection, but once the Target and Client connection is established and configured for automatic detection,
it re-connects to the client without intervention even when the target is powered on after the WHS client has been powered on and active.

DrivePool very quickly recognises the disks and presents the Pool for that target.

 

I do avoid shutting down the target whilst the client is active, shutting down the client first, then the targets.   

 

re Drive Letter - I have not noticed the iSCSI Drivepool drive letter changing - and without checking, I would say with my configuration the drive letter does not change.

[Christopher (Drashna)]

@Arthur,  

Very nice. I've used it a bit (was trying to get "diskless booting" working with it, unsuccessfully), and I can definitely agree with the "tricky" bit..

 

And Windows should remember the drive letter if the volume is the exact same one. Otherwise, it will auto-assign one, and could bump the letter.