Duplication issues after faulty disk was removed

[Black_Patriot]

Hi All,

 

I've had some searching around the forums and tried a few basic things to resolve my issue but no luck so far. To summarise:

 

Drive Scanner found some bad sectors on one of my drives, and thus told Drive Pool to move all data off the disk (as it should). Unfortunately I didn't have enough free space on the other drives so I ended up with a fair bit of duplicated data left over on the trouble disk. After moving the machine to a new case (I didn't have enough space for another drive and had been meaning to move over the internals but hadn't gotten around to it) and installing a new drive I added it to the pool and figured that would be that and all the files would migrate across. Unfortunately it seems that it's getting stuck on 3 files, and not progressing any further, so I'm left with 6 drives that are essentially at 100% capacity and a new drive that's only at maybe 40% usage, with Drive Pool telling me it's got 1.6TB of space unusable for duplication.

 

I upgraded to (what I think is) the latest BETA version (2.2.0.672) and tried re-balancing the pool several times, but it always gets stuck on those 3 files without moving any further. All 3 files are >1GB MKVs (if that makes a difference). The files aren't accessible using the pool, as I get a file not found error, and the duplication warning dialogue just says "Incorrect Function". I've dug around though the hidden pool folders on each drive and found intact copies of 2 of the trouble files (and made copies to the system drive which isn't part of the pool for safe keeping), with the plan of deleting the files from the pool, finishing the balance, and then restoring them, however I can't delete the files from the pool either.

 

Is there anything else I can try to fix the issue? Losing these 3 files isn't a big deal (as I have copies of 2 of them and don't care about the 3rd) but I obviously need to get the pool balance back to normal in case of another failure.

 

System info:

Server 2012 R2 Essentials

Drive Scanner 2.3.2.2886 (I think)

Drive Pool 2.2.0.672

Drives:
128GB SSD (System Drive)

7 x 3TB HDDs (pooled)

1 x 3TB HDD (bad sectors, unpooled, still has pool files on it though)

[Black_Patriot]

So it took a bit but that seems to have worked. I ended up booting into safe mode and removing 2 of the files, but the 3rd refused so I ran a chkdsk /F and then booted back into safe mode and could delete the file. Then booted back up normally and set the pool to re-balance. Thanks for your help.

[Christopher (Drashna)]

I would recommend removing the drive, rather than allowing it to rebalance.

 

use the "Duplicate data later", so it skips the duplicated data on the drive and reduplicates it after the drive is removed. Also, use the "Forced damaged disk removal" option, as this skips problem files and removes the rest of the data. 

 

Once that's done, you can address the remaining files, or just "trash" the disk.

[Black_Patriot]

So I've removed the old drive using duplicate data later, but I don't think I selected forced removal, as I'd done that just before my original post. Here's the current status of my pool:

 

Are there any tools I can run to resolve conflicts or remove problem files?

[Christopher (Drashna)]

Well, if the problem files were duplicated on the pool, then the "force damaged disk removal" option wouldn't be strictly necessary, as it would have skipped the file(s) regardless. 

 

As for the "resolve conflicts", it should prompt you about that.

However, right now, it looks like it wants to rebalance everything, and once that's done, it should try to reduplicate and prompt you if it runs into any issues. 

[Black_Patriot]

The problem is that it comes up with the 3 files as being in conflict, but if I click resolve nothing happens, it just goes back to re-scanning the pool to balance it.

 

Is there any way to manually remove these files from the pool? I'm thinking that if it can just get past these errors it should balance everything out properly, and then I can restore them from backup.

[Christopher (Drashna)]

If you check the log files, it may give you the exact location of the files in question (eg, what disk they're on). 

The log files are in "C:\ProgramData\StableBit DrivePool\Service\Logs\Service" 

 

And deleting the files from the pool or underlying disk may work, but it may be a file system issue.  If you are able to identify which disk the files reside on, I'd recommend running a CHKDSK pass on that disk, and see if it helps. 

[Christopher (Drashna)]

Well, I'm glad that you were able to get the files resolved.

 

Though, very odd that you'd need to go that far to fix it. 

 

If this happens again, let us know at https://stablebit.com/Contact