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Removed drive not evacuated?


JCMarsh

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Today I set out to upgrade my WHS2011 box by adding a second 3TB drive to the SBDP pool. Mostly, everything was fine, except...

 

I "removed" the 1TB drive that was part of the pool so that I could re-use it in another machine. After SBDP was done with the "Remove" process, though, there's still close to 2GB of data left on the drive. It's all in a PoolPart folder, but that folder isn't hidden. The harmless stuff that was left (videos, music) I just copied over to the pool. The files were already there, and file attributes matched, so no harm, no foul there. That took care of most of the nearly 2GB.

 

What does concern me somewhat is the remnants of the Client Computer Backups folder that were left on the "removed" drive. If these files are missing from the pool, or if I re-copy them to the pool, whether they are already extant there or not, will I hose my backups? I'm in no big hurry, as the build I was going to put the now-spare 1TB drive into will be a Christmas gift.

 

I guess my question is, "Should I fiddle with the leftover files, or go ahead and yank the drive out?"

 

General characterization of the box;

WHS2011, Intel H61-based mobo, Pentium G860, 8GB RAM, SBDP v1.3.7563. Used for household PC backup, media library backup, (Plex) Media Serving, and was running WSUS before I started running out of room. Don't know if I'll bring WSUS back unless I really, really want to keep XP machines alive.

 

EDIT-- I should note that all of the Server Folders , including the Client Computer Backups directory, were on the drive pool, not outside of it on the bare disks.

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Were all those files in a folder configured with duplication? Did you select the option to Duplicate Later when you removed the drive?  If so, then it leaves duplicated files on the disk for faster drive removal.  After the drive removal, it runs a duplication process to re-duplicate all file copies that were on the disk you removed.

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I've noticed that even when you _don't_ select Duplicate Later, copies of pooled files may remain on a removed disk. What seems to be happening is that, when removing a drive from the pool, DrivePool may encounter files that are being held open by Windows*. While it can't delete them, if it can still succeed in copying them, then it will continue to remove the drive from the pool.

 

So if the removal process completes without any error/warning messages about lost/uncopyable files, then DrivePool has successfully copied all files that were in that poolpart to the rest of the pool, the poolpart folder on the drive will be set visible instead of hidden, and the drive can be physically removed even if files are still "on" the drive.

 

*(I've noticed the Windows search/metadata engine in particular has a nasty habit of not bothering to release files straight away when it's done with them)

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Otis: The drive was used only for SBDP, and all folders in the pool were configured for duplication. I didn't select any options when removing. I actually just clicked through, accepting the defaults as I went. What I didn't mention is that the files were left behind were all set as Read-only, but the corresponding files (on the other pool drives) were not. I thought that was kind of odd, but Shane's response makes sense. That also brings up a good question, too; should one have Indexing enabled on a Pool or a member disk?

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I see. Well, it was off for one pool disk and the pool. I don't recall having made that change myself, but I've just switched it on for both pool disks and the pool itself.

I had noticed that my W7 box had been slow to show folder contents when browsing the Server Folders over the network. They're both on the same GbE switch. Writes to them were kind of iffy, sometimes getting speeds commensurate with GbE, sometimes slower than writes to my NSLU2 which is on the 100Mbit segment of my network. I really should migrate the content from the Public folder on the NSLU2 to my WHS, but I hadn't had any luck keeping remote access for WHS working until we recently got an upgrade to 10Mb DSL. I still use the NSLU2 for things I want to share with family and friends because it just plain works. I miss my old cable ISP so much now :(

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Windows Search can be a serious PITA.... it likes to do weird things....

 

 

As for speeds, I have a big list of tweaks over at We Got Served, for diagnosing/fixing speed issues. It's meant for WHSv1, but 90% of it still applies to any version of windows, actually.

http://forum.wegotserved.com/index.php/topic/8335-before-you-post-media-stuttering-playback-issues-performance-irregularities/

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What does concern me somewhat is the remnants of the Client Computer Backups folder that were left on the "removed" drive. If these files are missing from the pool, or if I re-copy them to the pool, whether they are already extant there or not, will I hose my backups? I'm in no big hurry, as the build I was going to put the now-spare 1TB drive into will be a Christmas gift.

 

JMarsh,

 

After a successful drive removal, DrivePool does not leave any of your files only in the removed PoolPart and not on the pool. As you've mentioned this would mean that something like a backup database would become useless or perhaps corrupt. In fact, while a drive removal is taking place, DrivePool makes your entire pool read-only just to safeguard your data from something like that happening.

 

But there are a few cases where your files will remain on the PoolPart:

  • If there is a mismatch in the file times or the file sizes between a file in a PoolPart and the same file on the pool. For example, if a duplicated file is in a conflicted state, we don't want to "merge" it, so we keep both parts around, one on the pool and one on the PoolPart being removed.
  • If the file is currently in use on the pool part being removed. Normally, this is taken care of by the restart manager API. But if the Windows restart manager is not functioning properly then you can end up with some files left behind.
  • If a folder is in use, it will not be deleted from the PoolPart being removed. This is because the restart manager does not handle in-use folders. This is typical if you're removing a pool part that has a shared folder in it. In this case, you would end up with an empty folder in a removed pool part.

The actual reason for any files getting left behind is written to the log file. The logs are available in C:\ProgramData\StableBit DrivePool\Service\Logs\Service. If you could send me the logs, I'll take a look at whether what you're seeing is normal or something that needs to be fixed.

 

Ultimately I would like to get rid of all of the above cases, because it's very confusing and a bit unsettling to see files left in a PoolPart folder after drive removal.

 

There is one exception to what I've said above. If you've specified the removal option "Force damaged drive removal (unreadable files will be left on the disk)", then any unreadable files will be left on the pool part, because that's what you've asked for specifically.

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Wouldn't you know it!

 

I'm away for a few days dealing with other things and I'm too late to catch the logs from the date in question. Oh well, it's working fine for the most part.

 

I'm over the leftover files as the copies in the pool are fine and the scheduled backups are good to go.

 

The one thing that bugs me somewhat but is unrelated to the leftover files issue I originally brought up is that the dashboard is out of kilter. On the SBDP page, the Overview tab doesn't display the folder sizes or overall total correctly. Three folders consistently display correctly, and the rest show zero bytes. This puts the total usage displayed at about half of what it really is. Have a look at the screen grab with annotations. Please tell me I'm not the only one who has been getting this. It wasn't always so, but just started after upgrading to the latest stable and replacing the 1TB drive with a 3TB unit. I feel fairly safe about my data not disappearing, but it's still disconcerting to look at sometimes.

All folders in my pool are set for duplication by SBDP, shadow copy off in OS, and permissions are the same for all folders except the client computer backups folder.

post-772-0-17653800-1380863045_thumb.jpg

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Wow, that's got to be it. From Start > Indexing Options the only folder indexed was the Public folder.

 

So, should I Modify and add the other folders from the Pool, or will they automagically be added with Advanced > Rebuild ?

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Fixed!!!

Thanks so much for your help with my problems, guys! It's working perfectly now. Charts and all. I set indexing for all of the folders on my pool, clicky rebuild, and hours later everything is just as it was meant to be. I don't want to fix it any further if it isn't broke, but should I also add the pool disks in the indexing options page, or is it enough that the pool is indexed?

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