Successful setup! I'm really liking this.

[jbarr]

I used to have an HP MediaSmart Home Server and I absolutely LOVED that you could add and remove drives as needed, and it would automatically handle balancing and selective folder duplication. 

 

Well, I purchased one of those tiny Intel NUC computers (NUC6I5SYH) (it rocks, by the way with it's i5 and SSD!) along with a Mediasonic 4 Bay SATA HDD Enclosure. The enclosure is populated with 2 x 2 TB drives and 2 x 1 TB drives. One of the 2 TB drives and one of the 1 TB drives each have tons of media and other files. The other two drives were empty.

 

So last night, I installed DrivePool, and after a little bit of testing to better understand how it works, I created a new pool, and added all 4 drives. I then used the slick "copy everything into the hidden folder" trick to quickly populate the pool, I configured the settings to enable duplication, and i then clicked "re measure". Today, it completed. Everything is balanced and duplicated.

 

I then removed the drive letters from the pool member drives (so Windows Explorer is now clean) and mounted the member drives as folders in a folder on the new DrivePool drive for "just in case" times when I want to look into the member drives directly.

 

I tried to get Storage Spaces working under Windows 10, but it failed in two ways:  First, it requires that all pooled drives be erased. This makes the process very, VERY long. And second, for some reason, Storage Spaces simply wouldn't work with my drive enclosure. 

 

In the end, I'm very, VERY happy with DrivePool. Now to test out DriveScan and put it through its paces. Looks like StableBit will be getting some of my money! HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!

 

 

 

[Christopher (Drashna)]

Well, I'm glad to hear that you're loving our software! 

 

As for Storage Spaces, it may be the way that it's accessing the data that caused the issue, or the constant, heavy activity. 

Either way, I'm glad to hear that StableBit DrivePool is working much better. 

 

 

As for StableBit Scanner, check out the manual:

http://stablebit.com/Support/Scanner/2.X/Manual

 

Especially the "Simulate" section: 

http://stablebit.com/Support/Scanner/2.X/Manual?Section=Simulate

 

 

And just FYI, if StableBit Scanner detects unreadable sectors during the surface scan, it will cause StableBit DrivePool to try to evacuate the contents of the drive onto other disks in the pool. (using the balancing feature). 

It doesn't do this with SMART data by default, as it ends up being too aggressive.  But you can change that. 

[useruser]

@Christopher (Drashna) I stumbled across this today because I have an 8 bay mediasonic that is throwing surface scan errors like crazy. It basically said every drive had 1 unreadable sector and it wants to evacuate my whole pool.  Nothing seems to be wrong with the mediasonic, what is it with this device that causes scanner to be so angry? Is there a way to fix this? Are the readings accurate or just because mediasonic is cheap and maybe drops a byte here and there?

[Christopher (Drashna)]

I don't have a good answer for that, because it's complicated.  Since there are a bunch of moving parts, it could be any number of issues.

That said, eSATA works best.  But barring that, try connecting the mediasonic enclosure to a powered usb hub, as that may help out.