Putting a damaged+scanned disk back into a pool-how?

[NickM]

Hi,

 

One of my disks, D:, had a block error, so DP seems to have locked the pool after trying to get as much data off the disk as possible (I think).

I've scanned the disk with chkdsk and told it to fix/reallocate any blocks/bad sectors, (chkdsk /b) then rebooted the server.

 

I don't understand the current state of the DP GUI (see attached picture).

 

What are the triangles underneath (D:\)? I can't click and drag them.

How can I add this disk back into the pool? (The other disks are now full).

 

I also have scanner installed, and while it shows the bad block, it would be useful if it actually showed which files were occupying that block. Is there any way to make it do this?

 

Thanks for any help.

 

 

[Christopher (Drashna)]

You can clear the damaged status in StableBit Scanner.  Either mark it as unchecked (so it will rescan) or mark it as good (but it will be flagged again in 30 days, or whatever your scan period is set to). 

Check this link for details (sector map section):

http://stablebit.com/Support/Scanner/2.X/Manual?Section=Disk%20Scanning%20Panel

 

The best option is to run "chkdsk /r /b" on the drive and see if that helps (this is VERY intensive, and make take a day or more to complete. And then clear the damaged status. 

 

 

As for the arrows:

• The Blue arrows are the target for balancing. Meaning that the software is trying to move data until it hits that marker.  In this case, "empty". 
• The Red arrows are "real time placement limiters".  Meaning that the pool will not place files on the disk past this point. In your case, "at all". meaning it will actively prevent files from being placed on the drive. 

 

These are covered in more detail here:

http://stablebit.com/Support/DrivePool/2.X/Manual?Section=Disks%20List

 

 

As for showing what files are affected, run the file scan in StableBit Scanner. 

http://stablebit.com/Support/Scanner/2.X/Manual?Section=File%20Recovery

 

This parses the NTFS data, and identifies if there are files in the affected location, and lists all of the affected files.  This can take a while, as it has to read all of the NTFS file data.  

(deleted or moved files don't clear data, so non-zero data may exist at the location but may not contain data used by the disk... this is actually how data recovery programs work, by reading all of this data and attempting to reassemble the chunks of data). 

[NickM]

Thanks Chris. Checking and rebuilding everything now,and running a rebalance. Thankfully scanner appears to have moved everything off the failing drive.

 

Is there any indication in the DP GUI that shows the pool has gone read-only?

[Christopher (Drashna)]

You are welcome. 

 

And yeah, it is supposed to do that by default (as long as StableBit Scanner marks it as damaged). 

 

As for the pool going read only, if it shows a missing disk, it will go read only. Or if the licensing status is not properly set (eg, it's not properly activated, or in the "Transfer" state).   Aside from these two conditions, the pool should never be read only... unless one of the underlying disks somehow got flagged as "Read Only".