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Q: Balancing Setup - Have I got it right?


jmone

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Newbie Q:  I have 2 x 8TB Seagate Archive drives and 7 x HDS 4TB drives in my pool.  As I need to grow my pool I remove a 4TB and replace with an 8TB.  

 

Given the disparity of performance of these drives I'd like to (if possible):

- Fill Drives the drives to 99% in order (no need for balancing across drives or duplication of files/folders within the pool)

- Keep the Seagate Archives full first

- Keep sub folder content "together" on physical disk were possible

- Keep a selected folder (Video Editing) off the slower to write Seagate 8TB Archives

 

At present I'm playing with the Balancing Settings as follows but not sure if this is correct:

- In File Placement Options I've unchecked the Seagate Disks for the Video Editing Folder

- Under Balancers I have this order and settings:

  #1 StableBit Scanner: Default

  #2 Ordered File Placement: Moved the Seagate Archive drives to the top of the list

  #3 Volume Equalization: On

  #4 Drive Usage Limiter: On with "Try not to fill a drive above 99%"

  #5 Prevent Drive Overfill: On with "Try not to fill a drive above 99%" and "Or this much free space unchecked"

  #6 Duplication Space Optimizer: Off

 

Thanks

Nathan

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Kicked of a manual balance and saw a lot of read activity by DrivePool.Service.exe  but no writes.  It finished the process saying there was "3TB could not be moved because a suitable destination could not be found.  Make sure you have enough disk space in order to satisfy your file placement rules and that they are not conflicting with other balancing settings".  So I'll try some variations :)

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Some tweaks and it is now doing stuff (though I can not see any details in the UI, I can see in Resource Mgr/Disk Activity the files being moved from one HDD to another).  It will take awhile.  The Balancing Settings I've now got are:

- In File Placement Options I've unchecked the Seagate Disks for the Video Editing Folder

- Under Balancers I have this order and settings:

  #1 StableBit Scanner: On, Default settings

  #2 Ordered File Placement: On, Moved the Seagate Archive drives to the top of the list, changed to "Control new file placement and move the existing files..."

  #3 Volume Equalization: Off

  #4 Drive Usage Limiter: Off

  #5 Prevent Drive Overfill: On with "Try not to fill a drive above 99%" and "Or this much free space unchecked"

  #6 Duplication Space Optimizer: Off

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So it finished the Balancing and filled up the Seagate 8TB drive (Disk 6 and 7) like I was hoping, though it is still not able to put my Video Editing on the free space now created on my faster Hitachi 4TB drive (Disk 3 - see pic).  

 

Any hints on what I've got wrong, as from what I can see:

- There is only 310GB to be move for the Video Editing Folder (214GB to be moved from Disk 6 and 94GB on Disk7)

- There is 2.66TB free on Disk 3

- The warning says there is 691GB to me moved (not 310GB)

 

Thanks

Nathan

 

Edit - I'll try just moving the files off just Disk 7 First and see what happens

Edit2 - Same thing.

Edit3 - Now trying with all Balancers OFF except for "Ordered File Placement"

Edit4 - Same thing.

Edit5 - In Ordered File Placement I unchecked on the Duplicated Tab - "Prioritize the placement of duplicated files" and now it seems to be moving the files in the Video Editing Folder.  I also see on the Main screen the Little Red Arrow on Disk 3 at the end has changed to say "New un-duplicated file placement limit 99%" where before I think this said "duplicated file placement limit".  The thing is I have no duplication set (except for the stock Meta Data Folder)

post-2289-0-56258600-1451858443_thumb.jpg

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You want the "Ordered File Placement" balancer installed. 

https://stablebit.com/DrivePool/Plugins

 

 

Additionally, if you want certain files/folders off of the Archive drives, then you want to use the File Placement rules. However, there is a config change that you need to make to get this to work properly.

 

 

By default, this plug-in will override any folder based or pattern based file placement rules. In order for folder based 

  or pattern based rules to take priority over this plug-in you can change the balancing settings on the "Settings" tab 
  as follows:
  • UNCHECK "File placement rules respect real-time file placement limits set by the balancing plug-ins."
  • CHECK "Balancing plug-ins respect file placement rules."
  • UNCHECK "Unless the drive is being emptied."
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Stopped what it was doing and made this one change (the rest was already done):

  • UNCHECK "File placement rules respect real-time file placement limits set by the balancing plug-ins."

Started it again and now it looks like it is moving the Video Editing files....  Will see how it goes with this then I'll re-enable some of the other "Balancers" as "Ordered File Placement" is the only one I currently have active.

 

Thanks

Nathan

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Thanks - I have the settings exactly as you posted.  I have added the new 8TB drive and moved it to the Top in the File Placement, marked more folders (like TV Recordings, VHDX etc) not to use these Archive Drive and have a Balancing running for the last 12 hours overnight (Seems to be sitting on 55.5% and not doing much at present but I'll keep an eye on it).  I did have trouble getting it to start the Balancing as the little button did not come up after making my setting changes till I rebooted.

Thanks

Nathan

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Well, something to keep in mind here: Balancing is done with a background priority. This means that it may be significantly slower than normal file copies. This is done so that balancing should never affect the performance of the pool (and system).

 

Clicking on the '>>" arrows at the bottom of the UI temporarily increases the priority. 

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