What is more efficient? One huge pool, or several smaller pools?

[Dr Julius]

My current pool holds about 40 TB, and consists of many different dirs and configs per dir and disk selections per dirs etc. But I notice that just finishing the 'Measuring' or 'Duplicating' statuses take so insanely long that I'm beginning to wonder if it would perhaps be better to have more than one pool, and make them smaller.

Is there a threshold for a number count of storage media, or amount of data in a pool, where it becomes more efficient to use more than one pool, and then use half a disk for one, and the other half for a second pool?

I have my main machine running only one pool for almost a decade now, so not complaining, but still, it does seem logical to maybe use more than one pool. Are any of you doing that?

[Dr Julius]

Nobody?

[Christopher (Drashna)]

There isn't really a one size fits all answer here.  But it really boils down to what you're storing and how much do you want to micromanage.  

Personally, I just use a single, large pool. And it is quite large. 

 

As for the measuring, this can take a while, especially if you have a lot of small files to measure.  Checking each file is resource intensive because of how file operations work.  But this shouldn't happen very often.

As for balancing/duplication, this can also take a while to complete.  Both are a multi step process that checks what needs to be moved, where it should be moved, and then moves/copies it.  The file copy uses the normal win32 api for moving files, but uses a background priority, so it can take longer if your pool is actively in use.