Where did my pool go?

[ben98923]

I set up a drive pool consisting of two drives (P; and Q:), neither of which can be mounted at boot because they are encrypted and the password request doesn't occur until I'm logged in.

 

I added some content to the pool I created.  All was well.

 

I look today (after one or more reboots) and the pool is gone, and in the UI of Drive Pool there's no listing of the drives on which the pool was located.  But the drivers (not the pool) are mounted and perfectly usable in Explorer as always.  

 

So, I'm assuming Drive Pool on reboot saw both drives missing (I didn't see any alerts/notices) and did something because they were pooled the drives aren't showing in the UI for some reason.

 

Is this usage not supported?  For drives which are not connected at boot?  Can I recreate the pool without needing to manually go into the pool directories to move the files out?

[Christopher (Drashna)]

You'll want to enable the "BitLocker_PoolPartUnlockDetect" setting in the advanced config file:

http://wiki.covecube.com/StableBit_DrivePool_2.x_Advanced_Settings

Specifically, sate the value to "true".

 

Or you'll want to upgrade to the public beta, where this value is enabled by default.

 

 

Either way, this handles unlocking drives much better (in part, by more aggressively querying for disk info). 

 

 

 

 

And to clarify, because the StableBit DrivePool Service doesn't see the disks properly, and doesn't see our folder structure, it removes the pool (no pooled disks, no pool). Once it sees the drives properly, it will automatically recreate the pool. It should retain the drive letter, label, and all settings when it re-appears. 

 

 

Worst case, you can manually restart the service, but the above settings should resolve the issue without having to resort to that.

[ben98923]

Thanks, that seemed to do it (or restarting the service did).  I'm not using bitlocker but another encryption software, does this just happen to have the name bitlocker in it but isn't really bitlocker specific?

[Christopher (Drashna)]

Thanks, that seemed to do it (or restarting the service did).  I'm not using bitlocker but another encryption software, does this just happen to have the name bitlocker in it but isn't really bitlocker specific?

Glad to hear it.

 

And no, it's not specific to BitLocker. It was initially introduced because of BitLocker, but I beleive that it should work with other software as well.

If you have issues with it detecting the drives properly with the setting enabled, then let us know (and what software you're using).

[ben98923]

Hmm...  It's not working.  I made the setting change.  But on reboots (unless I restart the service) the pool does not re-appear.  The encryption software I use is Jetico and it's like TrueCrypt or any of the others (when the system drive isn't encrypted), once you log in to Windows Jetico asks for your password to open the volume, you type it in and it mounts.  One thing that might be different about Jetico from TrueCrypt, for example, is that it re-uses the same drive letter.  So, at boot and at login before you give the container password the O: volume appears raw/unformatted.  You then give the container password and now O: is the unencrypted version of the volume.  TrueCrypt and others often mount a new drive letter when you give the container password (rather than re-using the old one).

[Christopher (Drashna)]

What specific product are you using specifically?

 

I looked at the "BestCrypt" volume encryption and that seemed to ... well, work as expected. 

[ben98923]

Hmm, weird.  Yes, I'm using volume encryption.  And I just double checked and I do have the entry:

 

In DrivePool.Service.exe.config I have:

 

           <setting name="BitLocker_PoolPartUnlockDetect" serializeAs="String">

                <value>True</value>

            </setting>

 

i am not using the beta, though, I'm using 2.1.1.561.  I wasn't sure what risk the beta posed (data safety/etc.).  Were you testing with the beta?

[Christopher (Drashna)]

I'm not sure, as I had to restore my VM (whoops, it locked the system and I forgot what I used for the password, but that's why I have the VMs! For testing). 

But I think I was on the beta build. (2.2.0.659 specifically). 

 

As for issues, especially regarding data integrity, there really shouldn't be any risk. We try to immediately address any issues that affect data. And most of t he changes are bug fixes to address issues people have ran into. 

 

But I understand not wanting to try beta versions. I'll see about reproducing this with the release (2.1.1.561) version later and let you know.  But if you do want to try the beta version, it may work better.

[ben98923]

Weird.  I just tried with the latest Drive Pool beta linked on the site 2.2.0.651 since you said the beta worked for you and it still doesn't detect my pool until I restart the Drive Pool service.

[Christopher (Drashna)]

Weird.  I just tried with the latest Drive Pool beta linked on the site 2.2.0.651 since you said the beta worked for you and it still doesn't detect my pool until I restart the Drive Pool service.

 

Well, I've tried again, and I'm not longer getting it to remount the pool without restarting the service. 

 

 

I've flagged the issue for Alex (the developer). 

https://stablebit.com/Admin/IssueAnalysis/24928