Q: Thinking of migrating from Drive Bender

[jmone]

Overall, I'm a happy Drive Bender user, have been for years, and no doubt would be fine for some time....  but given the recent changes at Division-M and Drive Bender going to Donation Ware, I figure now is the time to look proactivly at alternatives before some yet to be introduced change in the OS "breaks" my pools.

 

Pool 1: Main PC used for serving Media out to the house (on 24x7)  

    - Win10 64-Bit, 2x8TB, 7x4TB HDD all using ReFS, M1015 Controller (IT Flashed) + Mobo Ports.

 

Pool 2:  Backup Server I manually and periodically use FreeFileSync to review and then commit any any changes to from my Main Pool (as well as general PC Backups).  It is off most of the time.

    - Server 2012 R2 Esentials, 1x8TB, 3x6TB, 4x4TB HDD all using ReFS, Mobo Ports, cheap PCI SATA Cards (and a yet to be used Hotway 8 Bay HDD Drive Enclosure USB 3.0 e-SATA encosure)

 

I've read some of the threads and seem to have the answers that it will all be OK, but..... do you mind confirming the following specifics regarding a DrivePool implementation on both PCs for:

- Is ReFS supported on both Win10 and 2012R2

- Are the 8TB Seagate's OK to use

- Any issues with the mix of SATA/USB Controllers I've listed

- OK to continue to use Hard Disk Sentinel for SMART monitoring

- I don't use (or want duplication)

- I prefer Cascade over Balance for spreading the content across the drives (eg fill up one drive, move to the next)

- OK to use "Lights Out" on my 2012R2 to keep it asleep most of the time

- How fast is the Pool (eg I have teamed Dual Gigabit  - 2gbps)

- Any specific notes or issues serving media files (like with windows storage spaces and DVD stuctures)

- Any specific notes or issues with assigning permissions using Homegroup or UNC Shares

 

 

Thanks, and any other comments will be great!

Nathan

 

 

[Christopher (Drashna)]

I'm on ReFS you know!  No ChkDsk for me

 

Also I had another user ask me if DrivePool supports VSS (Drive Bender does not), but could not find a definitive answer on the forums.

Maybe, but the C:\ drive isn't ReFS though. And that's the one that would matter here (as that's where settings are stored). 

 

And I'm pretty sure that Windows doesn't support booting from ReFS yet.

 

 

 

 

And no, StableBit DrivePool doesn't support VSS.  And for the same reason Drive Bender doesn't. There is absolutely no information on how to implement it, so it requires reverse engineering the feature, and extensive testing. 

 

I know Anthony (drive bender dev) was working on support for it, but even so.... it was very unstable, at best. 

[jmone]

FYI - I just activated my Licence just fine using the Windows Server Essentials Dashboard DrivePool Plugin.  Prior to that I was trying to activate it from the Drivepool App in WSE itself.

[Christopher (Drashna)]

FYI - I just activated my Licence just fine using the Windows Server Essentials Dashboard DrivePool Plugin.  Prior to that I was trying to activate it from the Drivepool App in WSE itself.

Glad to hear it.

 

Though, it should be exactly the same.

 

However, if there were disk issues with the system disk, it could contribute to that problem. That, or the stable version does have some issues with licensing that are fixed in the beta versions.

[Lazy8]

Just read this thread and decided based on this and other research and Drashna's recommendations to make the switch from DB to DP as well. I recently had a HD fail in my DB pool and upon removing the drive I am now missing data Thankfully I had a backup, but decided since DB is not supported as much anymore and with the data loss, I'm done!

Thanks for the write up here on transferring from DB to DP. I will be doing this the next couple days. Thanks