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Cloning existing poolmember


tomba

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As long as both disks aren't in the pool at the same time, there should be no issue.  But why not add the 4TB to the pool, and then remove the 2TB?

 

Namely, I ask, because that 2TB is likely formatted as "MBR", while that 4TB will most likely need to be formatted as GPT. (advanced formatting may not work when you clone the disks, which means you'd be limited to ~2TBs of space)

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As long as both disks aren't in the pool at the same time, there should be no issue.  But why not add the 4TB to the pool, and then remove the 2TB?

 

Namely, I ask, because that 2TB is likely formatted as "MBR", while that 4TB will most likely need to be formatted as GPT. (advanced formatting may not work when you clone the disks, which means you'd be limited to ~2TBs of space)

The reason to clone is, is to not have to wait for the pool to empty the 2TB. Did that a couple of months ago and it took hours upon hours. Trying to save that time.

But, if I understand you correctly it will work? (Cloning the data to the new disk will give me 2TB more space on the pool without having to wait for the data to copy out and back in?)

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Yes, as Drashna says, DrivePool should accept a cloned disk, just do NOT let it see both disks at the same time until you've removed the poolpart from the original disk.

 

I'm curious, why not just start it as an overnight job before you go to sleep? That it will take hours shouldn't matter then. At 50MB/sec it would've taken under 12 hours, or less than the time between when you first posted and when Drashna replied.

 

Hmm. Do you happen to recall exactly how many hours it took to remove your 2TB disk last time? Wondering if we should establish some benchmarks for removing disks (e.g. to help answer questions like "hey, it's been fourteen hours and my 2TB disk hasn't finished removing yet, is something wrong?").

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Yes, as Drashna says, DrivePool should accept a cloned disk, just do NOT let it see both disks at the same time until you've removed the poolpart from the original disk.

 

I'm curious, why not just start it as an overnight job before you go to sleep? That it will take hours shouldn't matter then. At 50MB/sec it would've taken under 12 hours, or less than the time between when you first posted and when Drashna replied.

 

Hmm. Do you happen to recall exactly how many hours it took to remove your 2TB disk last time? Wondering if we should establish some benchmarks for removing disks (e.g. to help answer questions like "hey, it's been fourteen hours and my 2TB disk hasn't finished removing yet, is something wrong?").

Allright, glad that's settled. The reason to do it this way is mainly the sound (the server is near my bedroom) and costs (electrical). Also; the server is not very usable due to high diskload in the mean time ;)

 

The removal of the 2TB disk took several hours, about 10 if I recall correctly, but it was filled to the brim.

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Well, if everything was duplicated... you could have just pulled the drive, put in the new one, and then wait for it to duplicate to the new drive. That would have been the fastest way. :)

Well not exactly everyting was duplicated but hey ;) Thanks for your input!

I have decided to go the 'normal' way, removing and adding. I will post the times needed here when I am finished!

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I'm just as guilty of the "not duplicating everything". I'd like to, but ....

 

Also, you could use the "File Placement Limiter" balancer to force migration off the disk in question. That way, you don't have to sit waiting for the drive to remove. You can clear the data off and then quickly remove the disk. :)

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I'm just as guilty of the "not duplicating everything". I'd like to, but ....

 

Also, you could use the "File Placement Limiter" balancer to force migration off the disk in question. That way, you don't have to sit waiting for the drive to remove. You can clear the data off and then quickly remove the disk. :)

LOL, saw this a little bit too late ;)

The removing of the 2TB (containing about 1TB of data) took about 7 hours. I then placed the 4TB drive and since then Drivepool's been working for about 13 hours and is currently at 94,0% (Total disks in DrivePool; 3, 1 3TB and 2 4TB's)

 

One thing I did notice is that StableBit Scanner started scanning concurrently with the duplication (because it's new of course). I would have expected it to wait with the surface scan until DrivePool is ready.

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Tomba, did it say "scanning" or "waiting to scan"? Because normally, if there is disk activity, Scanner will delay the scan, as to not interfere with normal file operations.

 

That, or, have you messed with that setting?  Or, it was possibly low enough activity where it didn't trigger this delay in Scanner.

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Tomba, did it say "scanning" or "waiting to scan"? Because normally, if there is disk activity, Scanner will delay the scan, as to not interfere with normal file operations.

 

That, or, have you messed with that setting?  Or, it was possibly low enough activity where it didn't trigger this delay in Scanner.

It was definitively scanning, saw this both in the dashboard and resource monitor (100MB/s scanning of DR1)

Which setting do you mean exactly.

 

Anyway, an update on the time everything took.

- Disabling duplication on the biggest directory (2972GB) to allow the 2 TB to be removed: 2 hours

- Removing the 2TB disk (which had about 1TB of data left): 7 hours

- Re-enabling duplication on the directory to duplicate it to the 4TB: 7,5 hours

 

Specs of the server:

Dual Core Pentium Core2Duo E2220 (2,4GHz)

2GB of RAM

128GB Crucial M4 SSD (bootdisk)

1x Toshiba 3TB 7200 rpm

2x Hitachi 4TB 5900 rpm

 

The 2 TB disk was a 5400 rpm Samsung disk

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