Noob questions: problems with ASM1061, duplication, upgrading drives

[Will R]

Ok so first off I am a newbie to Drivepool and I am currently evaluating it.  Box is Win 7 x64 pro, Asus M5A78L-M (AMD 760 chipset) AM3+ mlb with 6 sata 3 ports, FX 8320e, 16gb ram.  I also have a cheapo $10 IOcrest ASM1061 PCIe 2 sata expansion card (wanted to use for storage as opposed to boot drive).

 

Wanted to step up from my 2 x 2TB mirror and evaluating this vs drive bender vs flexraid vs W10 storage spaces, etc.

 

So I have 6 x 2TB WD Green drives, 1 has my data so I created a pool with 5 with the intent to do a clean copy, then add the 6th to the pool after.  Want to use 2x duplication (follow up question on that as well).  4 drives are on the onboard sata controller (AMD) with 2 on the ASM1061 card.

 

 

Downloaded 2.1.1.561.  It creates the pool fine after some format time.  Problems start when I start robocopy from my source drive.  Copy write is dead slow, and keeps timing out (robocopy timing out and pausing for 30 seconds constantly).  Looking in event logs, and I see sata errors pointing to drive 9 (which is on the pcie sata card).  If I leave it alone Drivepool will eventually disconnect the drive and kick it out of the pool.

 

Question #1 - any thoughts as to why drivepool hates this controller?  Windows seems fine with it, I can do a 1:1 robocopy to that drive when not pooled and no issues.  I did search on the forum and it seemed that was an OK controller to use.

 

Once I figured out it was the drive on the expansion controller, I swapped some cables around and had the same problem with whatever drive was plugged into that.  I gave up on that, yanked the PCIe Sata card, and just created a pool with 4 x 2TB drives.  No issues now, copy process is moving along fine.

 

Question #2 : So I set the entire pool for 2x duplication.  It is my assumption this will give me single drive failure protection, yes?  The question is, how much space am I losing to duplication once it fills up?  On my 8TB (ok 7.25 or whatever windows says) pool, how much will I lose?  50%, or 4TB?  I'd hoped for something closer to raid 5 level of space usage since it's mostly media, but am curious.

 

Question #3 : So when it comes time for bigger drives, using 2x duplication, what's the best way to upgrade?  Remove one from the pool, then add in the new drive and let it balance?  In the past with raid setups I would just yank one drive at a time and let it rebuild, then expand the volumes 1 drive at a time.   

 

Thanks... I have been digging through the forums but haven't found what I've been looking for yet.

 

[Christopher (Drashna)]

First, if you're using the ASMedia ASM1061 chipset, you MUST install the ASMedia drivers to get port multiplier support. 

And actually, for consumer controller cards, we highly recommend the ASM1061 chipset, as it's very stable.

 

 

1. StableBit DrivePool shouldn't have any issues with the controller card, actually. In fact, a lot of testing for both StableBit DrivePool and StableBit Scanner was done on this chipset. 
   If I had to guess, it maybe because of how StableBit DrivePool writes to the disk, and that the driver for it is having issues. 
   
   If you're using the Windows driver, that may be the problem. If so, update it, and you should be good to go. 
   http://www.sybausa.com/productInfo.php?iid=1104
    
2. If you set the entire pool for 2x duplication, then you lose half the space. Duplication is a 1:1 copy/mirror of the files.  And yes, it means that you can lose a disk without losing data.  You can potentially lose more, depending on how the data is placed, but likely, a second disk failure will result in data loss.
   
   Basically, with 2x duplication, 4TBs of data will use up 8TBs of disk space on the pool. 
   
   But there is no rebuild required. The data is still accessible, and will be reduplicated as soon as the failed/failing disk is removed from the pool. 
    
3. Just add another drive.
   Seriously. That's all you need to do.  The driver and service will make sure that any duplicated data resides on two physical disks. As you add more disks to the pool, is will spread the data out, but still keep it on two different disks. 
   
   However, if you do want to replace the existing disks, then just remove the disk from the pool, and add the new one. This does mean that you'll want to have at least some free space, or to keep the last port option, just so you can add the new disk first.  The software will handle where to put the data, for you. 

[Will R]

Thanks for the reply, I'll try that driver.

 

I don't suppose there's 1.5x duplication?    Because honestly with 2x on it's basically mirrored stripes, but minus the rebuild time.  I just hate to lose HALF for media files.

[Christopher (Drashna)]

No, there isn't. And no, there is no parity option either.

 

However, we do have a number of users that use FlexRAID or SnapRAID in conjunction with StableBit DrivePool, to get the pooling functionality from our software, and the advantage of snapshot parity. So, the best of both, basically.

 

http://community.covecube.com/index.php?/topic/52-faq-parity-and-duplication-and-drivepool/