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Other ?? I have read about.


psikey

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Previously used old-school RAID, StoragePool and FlexRAID so thought I'd give the trial a go.

 

It actually looks to be exactly what I'm after but I'm struggling with the "Other" space being taken.

 

I have a 4TB and 1.5TB drive in my pool and only thing showing on the drives after enabling show hidden/system files is data in the DrivePool hidden folders on each drive.

 

I've eved use TreeSize app which can show real contents of System Volume Info & Recycle folders and confirmed no System Restore or Shadow type copies on these two drives yet 4TB is showing 214GB of other (the 1,5TB only showing 6GB)

 

Where has the 214GB gone ??

 

Its the only thing putting me off buying it after only a few hours on the trial.

 

The 4TB is showing 2.7TB unduplicated; 14.6GB Duplicated; 214GB other; 734GB free

The 1.5TB is showing 645GB unduplicated; 14.6GB Duplicated; 6.21GB other; 734GB free

 

Using Windows 8 Pro on an SSD in a N54L Microserver.

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OK

 

I followed http://wiki.covecube.com/StableBit_DrivePool_Q2299585B and deleted the AppData, rebooted and re-measure and now not showing the 213GB other (now shows 366MB and 3.25G)

 

Still can't understand why 3.25GB on the 1.5TB drive but what exactly am I misunderstanding about "other" seeing as nothing has changed on the drives and got the 214GB back ??

 

Also, do the drives still follow the spin-down times as set in Windows power savings?

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ACtually, the other is okay. It's supposed to be there. 

 

There is a nice post about that, as well as a blog post:

http://community.covecube.com/index.php?/topic/37-faq-unduplicated-vs-duplicated-vs-other-vs-unusable/

 

 

But basically, it's any files outside of the pool (such as data on it already when you added it, or shadow copies, or the recycle bin on the hard drive). As well as "misc used space", as in that 1kb file still takes up the 4k sector. And the discrepancy gets reported by NTFS, when is what we read, and calculate the usage.

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Not sure if I didn't make myself clear or you miss-read. I mentioned that I'm aware of the potential for the sources of "other" files but that I'd checked there weren't any. I then followed your Q2299585B deleting the AppData folder for DrivePool and ran the re-measure function and the 214GB showing as "other" disappeared so it was your app misreporting it, not that there was 214GB of "other" files ?

 

Any further feedback on this please. I already read the FAQ & link before posting. I wouldn't class myself as an expert but I am an IT Systems Manager so not totally clueless :)

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Okay, I wasn't sure.

 

On the DrivePool UI, when it's measuring, it has a small "pac man" type icon in the bottom left corner of the Pie Chart area to indicate that it's still indexing.

 

And from the sounds of it, it wasn't still indexing. If that is the case, it is possible that it got interrupted. Such as if it got rebooted, or needed to do a balancing/duplication pass.

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Well I'm so impressed with it (especially after trying the Scanner too) that I've bought the 2 app deal after only 2 days trial :)

 

Using this on my N54L Microserver which is purely used as my media store/Plex server + torrents at home. I'm finding it much easier to understand/use than FlexRAID Pooling I purchased last year. For this server its more about max storage space than redundancy.

 

I only really need Folder Duplication for critical frequently changed/added files (photos/Home Movies), as I backup to another Microserver on a schedule, so no big deal getting my large Movie files back off the backup server if a drive fails.

 

 

Couple of quick questions. Will Scanner, with its installed defaults, still allow Windows Hard Drive standby or do I need to untick Advanced Power Management which is currently set to Maximum performance (no standby) as installed? This server is idling most of the time consuming only ~25W so need to ensure drive spin-down working as before (currently set in Windows8 to 30 minutes). I also use Lights-out to put the whole system in hibernation at set times based on Calendar when its only then consuming 1w. Will the "prevent-standby" type options clash with those in Lights-out? For example, with uTorrent I set Lights-out to not Hibernate if the uTorrent process is still running. Would I need to set a similar kind of rule to make sure it doesn't hibernate in Balancing/Scanning drives etc.?

 

I also have a G8 Microserver with a proper P222/512 RAID card currently with 4x3TB RAID5 (used as my lab & Media Backup from other server). I'm assuming Drivepool/Scanner doesn't really add anything to this unless I ran as individual drives ??

 

Also, my drive pool of currently a 4TB & 1.5TB show as 5TB usable pool. Why does Windows Drive Management show it as 2047.97GB and also in the Task Manager graphs also shows it as only 2TB Capacity for Covecube Virtual Disk?? Also, in Task Manager the DrivePool disk shows no Activity while the pooled disks themselves do. Does the Virtual DrivePool not interact correctly with Task Manager etc.?

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Glad to hear that you are loving our products!

 

And yes, FlexRAID is ... incredibly complicated for doing something that is supposedly simple. But glad you are loving our product.

 

As for Scanner, there is a Pinned thread that you may want to check out that explains a lot of those settings. Alex (the developer) has a nice long post explaining all the settings. Worth checking out:

http://community.covecube.com/index.php?/topic/48-questions-regarding-hard-drive-spindownstandby/

(and it should answer all your questions, so I'm not going to attempt to here.

 

Basically, no, DrivePool doesn't add much to the RAID card. Sort of. You can definitely add the RAID array to the pool without any issue. But personally, I'd rather use DrivePool and Scanner over the RAID array. Namely because you should be able to get SMART data if you pass the disks through (as individual drives, though this may require enabling "UnsafeDirectIo").   

The reason I use this instead (I have a HighPoint RocketRAID 2720SGL card), is that you get more disk space out of this, and having both installed will add a "Scanner" balancer for DrivePool that will evacuate data from a drive that Scanner detects as failing.

 

 

As for DrivePool's disk in Disk Management, that is because we use a "virtual driver" for the drive. 

And as for the IO, that's because the DrivePool drive doesn't actually exist, and all IO operations are passed onto the disks directly. This means that you should get better performance.

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