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Dead Drive - What Was On It?


GiantCow

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After using DrivePool for a number of years one of the drives finally died. Luckily everything I have is replaceable but the tricky part is figuring out what to replace as it's all TV shows and movies. Is there any way I can find out what is/was on each drive?

 

I see the PowerShell thread stickied but unfortunately I don't visit the boards often so I didn't have that set up.

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​It's too late now. It wouldn't matter anyway because in the default configuration DrivePool splits your media so much across the drives that it's way too time consuming to try to replace single files manually. I'm using DrivePool for the same reason (media library) as you so I can give you two critical tips to avoid this in the future:

​

​1) Install the Ordered File Placement plugin from here. After that go to your pool options, activate the Ordered File Placement balancer and deactivate all others. Then prioritize your drives. This way when you add a TV show or a new season, it will all land on the same drive and will not be spread across the pool which is critical for a possible replacement unless you use capacity wasting duplication.

Configurable ​Folder Split Levels would be an more ideal solution but the sole DrivePool developer "Alex" personally doesn't see the need for it -> low on priority list and will most likely never happen.

​2) Use the tool WinCatalog 2017 to keep track on what drive your media is. I'm very impressed with the tool so far. It not only archives the location and size of your files but also details like resolution/bitrate/audio tracks etc.

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First, I'm sorry to hear about the failed drive, as that is never a pleasant experience. 

 

This topic is covered in detail here:

 

http://community.covecube.com/index.php?/topic/746-drive-must-have-died-is-there-a-way-to-tell-what-was-on-it/

 

If duplication was enabled, then nothing is lost. Just remove the missing drive and let it reduplicate. 

 

If it wasn't duplicated, well, if you have an inventorying software (such as sickbeard, sonarr, radarr, etc), just rescan the library, and make sure it's set to monitor these folders.  The software should go and re-download the missing content. 

(In fact, that's why I personally recommend this software, even if you're ripping the media yourself, as it is fantastic inventory software)

 

 

As for "for the future",

http://community.covecube.com/index.php?/topic/1587-check-pool-fileparts/

http://community.covecube.com/index.php?/topic/1865-howto-file-location-catalog/

 

 

 

​It's too late now. It wouldn't matter anyway because in the default configuration DrivePool splits your media so much across the drives that it's way too time consuming to try to replace single files manually. I'm using DrivePool for the same reason (media library) as you so I can give you two critical tips to avoid this in the future:

​

​1) Install the Ordered File Placement plugin from here. After that go to your pool options, activate the Ordered File Placement balancer and deactivate all others. Then prioritize your drives. This way when you add a TV show or a new season, it will all land on the same drive and will not be spread across the pool which is critical for a possible replacement unless you use capacity wasting duplication.

Configurable ​Folder Split Levels would be an more ideal solution but the sole DrivePool developer "Alex" personally doesn't see the need for it -> low on priority list and will most likely never happen.

​2) Use the tool WinCatalog 2017 to keep track on what drive your media is. I'm very impressed with the tool so far. It not only archives the location and size of your files but also details like resolution/bitrate/audio tracks etc.

See above.

 

  1. This can help, definitely.  And for adding data, it will definitely end up "together".

    As for the folder level splits, just because Alex doesn't see a use for it, doesn't mean it won't end up in the product.  I've stated that repeatedly.   And more to the point, Alex is the developer and has a far better idea of how the software works, more so than myself or you.  But yes, he's not infallible.  And again, that's why I keep pushing this topic.   We've discussed it internally EXTENSIVELY. And it is possible that it may make it in a 2.3 or 2.4 release.  
  2. Not a bad program. There are a bunch of stuff that will do this, as well.  And "alternativeto.net" is a great resource for finding software. 
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I feel your pain.  Over the years, I've lost sectors, files, drives, even had an entire pool corrupted (fight between my RAID card chkdsk) and have come to the conclusion that the only way to really protect what you have (and it comes at a cost), is to have a backup.... eg two physically separate pools.  This helps you restore content due to Drive Failure, Unintended Deletes, Fire, Theft etc.... but it costs 2x as much.  I do not use any file duplication, RAID etc within these pools.  I then use FreeFileSync to do a pre-sync check to make sure I'm happy with the changes that will be made to my backup pool (eg to see if there are any unintended file deletes etc before I commit these changes).  On a HDD failure I can simply run FreeFileSync and copy any missing files back into the affected pools.

 

This has also reduced my desire to have a folder level grouping feature.  That said I do use the Ordered File Placement plugin as I want to fill up my Seagate Archive Drives one at a time with my Media (mostly BD Rips by Vol) as my usage is write once / read many so these drives are perfect to use with this plug in.   I guess it would be good to be able to add a new Drive to the pool then ask DP to use this as Disk 1 and re-order the entire pool according to the folder structure, but such a process of reordering the content over the drives would takes weeks in my case (50TB pool).

 

I would support the feature request for an inbuilt DP Database that held the location of all files so you could export it out by Pool, Drive, Folder etc as needed.

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Thanks for the suggestions guys. Good thing it was only 3TB, would have been a much bigger headache if it were a a larger drive.

 

I guess nothing to do except slowly replace the lost files and think of a preventative solution for the future. Just wish drive prices would come down a bit.

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i use a powershell script to put the tree output into 2 files. one with just the directories so it is more easily browseable and one with full files.  i use task scheduler to run it weekly basically under the assumption that replacing a week's worth with sonarr/radarr isn't too bad.  you really should have a backup though.  here is my script for reference. you can modify it for where your drives are mounted and where you want the files.  i mount mine inside a folder called drives and store inside a "Trees" folder in the documents section.  this produces 2 txt files with the date in the filename to make things easy but you might need to keep an eye on how many you keep.  my two files combined are about 275MB on 25TB roughly of files.  for sorting i make it do year month day.  that way when sorted alphabetically the files are in the proper order.  file names will look like this for example trees-2017-07-23.txt and trees_with_files-2017-07-23.txt.  might help in the future.

 

$date = (Get-Date -format "yyyy-MM-dd")
tree C:\Drives > "C:\Users\Administrator\Documents\Trees\trees-$date.txt"
tree C:\Drives > "C:\Users\Administrator\Documents\Trees\trees_with_files-$date.txt" /F
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Thanks for the suggestions guys. Good thing it was only 3TB, would have been a much bigger headache if it were a a larger drive.

 

I guess nothing to do except slowly replace the lost files and think of a preventative solution for the future. Just wish drive prices would come down a bit.

 

 

This is why I enable duplication, and why we recommend doing so.

 

 

That said, yes, the prices are expensive.... but it may be worth checking out reddit.  Specifically, the datahoarder subreddit.  You'll find posts about good deals pop up there.  And the buildapcsales and homelabsales subs, as well. 

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First, I'm sorry to hear about the failed drive, as that is never a pleasant experience. 

 

This topic is covered in detail here:

 

http://community.covecube.com/index.php?/topic/746-drive-must-have-died-is-there-a-way-to-tell-what-was-on-it/

 

If duplication was enabled, then nothing is lost. Just remove the missing drive and let it reduplicate. 

 

If it wasn't duplicated, well, if you have an inventorying software (such as sickbeard, sonarr, radarr, etc), just rescan the library, and make sure it's set to monitor these folders.  The software should go and re-download the missing content. 

(In fact, that's why I personally recommend this software, even if you're ripping the media yourself, as it is fantastic inventory software)

 

 

As for "for the future",

http://community.covecube.com/index.php?/topic/1587-check-pool-fileparts/

http://community.covecube.com/index.php?/topic/1865-howto-file-location-catalog/

 

 

 

See above.

 

  1. This can help, definitely.  And for adding data, it will definitely end up "together".

     

    As for the folder level splits, just because Alex doesn't see a use for it, doesn't mean it won't end up in the product.  I've stated that repeatedly.   And more to the point, Alex is the developer and has a far better idea of how the software works, more so than myself or you.  But yes, he's not infallible.  And again, that's why I keep pushing this topic.   We've discussed it internally EXTENSIVELY. And it is possible that it may make it in a 2.3 or 2.4 release.  

  2. Not a bad program. There are a bunch of stuff that will do this, as well.  And "alternativeto.net" is a great resource for finding software. 

 

 

Can't wait! :D

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