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New user: Oddity migrating files with "Max path length" error


madsci1016

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Hi there.

 

New user evaluating DrivePool to replace my cheap and aging RAID5 enclosure attached to a WHS2011. I simply used drag and drop to move some of my shared folders from  "H:\ServerFolders\" to "K:\Shared Folders\" and got a few errors about not being able to copy due to file path name being too long. After clicking skip and letting it finish I noticed about 300GB had failed to copy out of 1.5TB. 

 

Now I doubt chances are I was living at the extreme end of the file path limit with 300GB of data and that single character extra put me over, so I had a question:

 

1) How does drivepool handle saving long (but not over windows limit) file structures to the virtualpool  drive when it then has to go append "PoolPart.ef564dc2-9e4d-4302-91bb-3bb3cef750cc5" at the beginning when saving the structure to a real drive and then being too long for windows to save? 

 

I'm now trying to move the data with this robocopy command :robocopy "H:\ServerFolders" "K:\Shared Folders" /MIR /ZB /SEC /R:10 /W:10 /V /TEE /LOG:xcopy.txt  and so far i haven't seen any errors flash by, but would it be better to migrate using that command over gui drag and drop? 

 

Bill

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If you are using a DP Pool, would you not access files through the DP Pool drive letter? That would not include Poolpart.etc.

 

Also, whenever I move shared folders, I typically use the move folder wizard through the dashboard. Never gave me an issue with file name lengths nor permissions and links etc.

 

Chris will be able to say more/better but AFAIK, DP uses UNC paths so max file name lenght is about 32K(!). Windows Explorer however, I believe, has a 255 char limit. So DP handles long filenames well but when you access the files directly on the HDD that is part of the Pool with Explorer, for instance, then the 255 char limit may become an issue faster due to the Poolpart.etc. extra chars.

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Windows is weird. 

 

ROFLMAO

 

Amen. 

 

 

That said, there are two ways to address files: Win32 API (which is what explorer users) and UNC (which is what we use, and robocopy uses, and other utilities).

 

The main difference between these?  Win32 is legacy, and limited to 260 characters.  UNC is limited to 32k characters.  

 

So, in theory, StableBit DrivePool will never have issues moving files around, or accessing them. But the software you're using MIGHT. 

 

 

WIndows 10 has a hack to enable log file name support in Explorer... which I find INCREDIBLY helpful (since I deal with some really long paths, due to the way I organize files (friends claim I'm OCD, I'm not, I'm just meticulous)).

http://windowsitpro.com/windows-10/enable-long-file-name-support-windows-10

 

 

That said the simple way to have handled this? 

Add the RAID array to the pool, seed the pool, and then use the "Drive Usage Limiter" balancer to clear out the drive, and then remove the disk. :)

 

At least, that's what I would have done.

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That said the simple way to have handled this? 

Add the RAID array to the pool, seed the pool, and then use the "Drive Usage Limiter" balancer to clear out the drive, and then remove the disk. :)

 

At least, that's what I would have done.

 

Well, from the outside looking in I did not think of this, nor would have probably done it anyway as you are talking about my precious, 15 years worth of saved data, and (no offense) Drivepool is still un-trusted (to me) software. There was just something more warm-blanket-feeling about watching the manual transfer. 

 

I'm also taking the RAID 5 offline for a few months with the old data set to have as a hot backup as I get more comfortable with drivepool, so i wouldn't wanted to have moved it off. Afterwords I'll dismantle the array and bring the disks into the pool as 'fresh' disks. 

 

Thanks for explaining windows to me, that explains the behavior I saw. 

 

Before my 30 days is up and I have to give you money, quick unrelated question. Would Clouddrive be a good replacement for cloudberry backup? I have cloudberry push file changes to Amazon glacier every night, encrypted of course. From what I read on Clouddrive, it's more a live folder of your cloud storage type app, and not a backup your data to cloud app. Is this correct? 

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Not a problem, at all! 

 

And you're very welcome.

 

 

As for StableBit CloudDrive vs CloudBerry, I would recommend keep on using CloudBerry backup.

 

Specifically, StableBit CloudDrive works by creating a virtual drive on the system, and stores the disk data on the provider.  So the drive works like a normal disk.  And you can do whatever with it.

However, the cost of the software doesn't include a subscription to any cloud services. That's completely separate. 

 

Also, we don't support Amazon Glacier at all, as there is a 4 hour delay in data retrieval, which makes it unusable for us. 

 

It also has 30 day trial period, so you may want to check it out as well.

And the manual covers a lot of what it does:

http://stablebit.com/Support/CloudDrive/Manual

 

That said, if you do plan on getting StableBit Scanner, CloudDrive is only $10 (when purchasing the bundle).  So it may be worth the $10 in that case.

 

And if you haven't considered StableBit Scanner, ... well, I apologize for the sales pitch here.... but: 

 

You may want to check out StableBit Scanner as well. Not only does it monitor the SMART attributes of the drives (which can give pre-failure warnings), but it does a surface scan of the drive which will let you know if there are problems reading the disk, and can potentially trigger the drive's built in error correction to fix bad sections on the disk before they become an issue (a process usually referred to as called "data scrubbing"). 
 
Additionally, if you have both StableBit Scanner and StableBit DrivePool installed on the same system, DrivePool will grab information from Scanner. And if Scanner detects damage on the disk, DrivePool will automatically move data off of the disk in an attempt to prevent data loss due to corruption/damage.
 

 

 

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That said, if you do plan on getting StableBit Scanner, CloudDrive is only $10 (when purchasing the bundle).  So it may be worth the $10 in that case.

 

And if you haven't considered StableBit Scanner, ... well, I apologize for the sales pitch here.... but: 

 

 

 

 

Yeah yeah. You've helped me on two scanner issues through tickets the past week. (It not running on my HTPC because of corrupt WMI and it going crazy with a SMART failure on/off every minute on the server running drivepool) so I get the idea. I was going to just buy scanner and use snapraid till i realized snapraid was just data parity and not really drive pooling. Then I figured I'd give your pooling solution a try. 

 

Gonna need to buy a copy of drive pool and at least 2 copies of scanner for both PCs that have RAID or pooling. Might add on two more copies for may main clients, not sure yet. Have to figure out the best way to 'bundle' all that because I see the price of scanner goes down the more copies you buy. 

 

Feedback from a geek: I read that when drivepool and scanner are both installed, a drive detected as failing will automatically be set to migrate data off in the pool. But I can't find any visual confirmation in DrivePool that it acknowledges Scanner is installed and that will happen. Either I'm blind (possible) or it's not in the GUI. A real big checkmark somewhere in Drivepool that it sees scanner is installed and explains how drives will be removed if detected as bad might be nice. I like my GUI confirmations I guess, else I'd probably be running a linux file server. 

 

Ok, I see it listed as a Balancer in the list of priority. Does that mean it has linked up with scanner? Or would that show either way? 

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Well, glad I was able to help. you already then. ;)

 

And yeah, after the first license, the rest can be bought at a discount, if you input your Activation ID (so the additional llcenses of Scanner would be $15/each).

 

 

As for the feedback:  This is actually handled by the balancing system entirely.  And the "StableBit Scanner" balancer (in StableBit DrivePool) is explicitly what handles this.

http://stablebit.com/Support/DrivePool/2.X/Manual?Section=Balancing%20Plug-ins

The second picture on the page actually shows the balancer settings for this, and with the default settings (the ones that control this behavior).

 

And yes, this balancer shows up regardless of the installation status.  It's one of the built in balancers.

 

But yeah, a prompt about this when it's first detected would be a good idea.  there are a few UX things we've wanted to improve, so I'll add this to the list.

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