Question about scheduled power cycling

[sim_cubed]

I have a D4-320 DAS as a single pool member used only for scheduled backups of another NAS. I want to power cycle it on a schedule via a smart plug. Is it safe to do this with DrivePool running? Does DrivePool do anything automatically when the drives reconnect that I should account for? Any insights would be great.

Thanks!

[Shane]

Hi sim_cubed, as far as I know it is as safe to power cycle a disk that's part of a pool as it is to power cycle a disk that isn't (e.g. if any new or changed files are being written to the pool at the time those may be lost). DrivePool's background balancing uses temporary files so existing content should not be at risk any more than they would be on a non-pool disk).

When all disks are reconnected and the service is running DrivePool will re-measure the pool to check if any content has changed; if you've got a lot of files in the pool this can take a while.

[Shane]

It will attempt to repeat the re-measuring when it next can; the measurements are used to help with balancing (though will still run even if no balancers are enabled).

If you want to check whether DrivePool has finished measuring and (if any) balancing you can use the advanced settings "RunningFile_FileName" entry to have DrivePool place a specific temporary file somewhere while it is performing background task, and monitor that.

[sim_cubed]

Thanks for the reply Shane!

Regarding the re-measuring, if I plan to turn on the DAS just before backup, let the backup run and then power down the DAS ~2-3 hours later, what are the implications if the re-measuring doesn't complete?