Existing drives, how to convert

[ezelkow1]

So over the years Ive thought about getting a jbod enclosure since i wanted something I could just add drives to as needed, and drivepool seems like just the software to manage it without too much worry of data loss (i.e. only lose whats on a dead drive).  I was wondering what happens with drives with existing data though. I tried the demo and added some existing drives, saw it created an empty drive with whatever free space was available, but I did not see any sort of 'conversion' type of option.

 

So is there a way to have it start transfering files of drives added to a pool to actually exist in the pool so that you can get rid of the existing drive letter?

[Jaga]

DrivePool will work (as you found out) with drives that have existing data on them.  To get the data moved onto the pool so it isn't just sitting on a drive, give your DrivePool drive a letter and simply move (cut/paste) the files over to it.  It'll start distributing those files to all drives in your pool, according to whatever balancing policy you setup - the default is evenly between all pool drives.  Any files that started and ended up on the same physical drive just use the NTFS "move" operation, and the MFT is simply updated instantly (like moving a file between folders on the same drive).

Once you have just the pool directory left (which is hidden on each pool drive) and no un-pooled files on them, you can un-assign the old drive letter if you like.  I prefer to mount them as folders under my C:\Pool_Volumes folder, so I can quickly and easily get to all the drives outside of the Pool.

 

[Christopher (Drashna)]

On 5/15/2018 at 6:37 PM, ezelkow1 said:

I was wondering what happens with drives with existing data though

They stay on the disk, outside of the pool, and are considered "other" data.  And nothing will be in the pool.

On 5/15/2018 at 6:37 PM, ezelkow1 said:

So is there a way to have it start transfering files of drives added to a pool to actually exist in the pool so that you can get rid of the existing drive letter?

You want this: 
http://wiki.covecube.com/StableBit_DrivePool_Q4142489

 

As for the existing drive letters, you may want to take a look at this: 
http://wiki.covecube.com/StableBit_DrivePool_Q4822624

[Jaga]

Small sidenote from me on the drive letters, since I changed to a defragmenter that requires letters assigned and I hate to see all the pool drives in Explorer.  I followed the instructions from this article to selectively hide the drives I wanted.  They can still be accessed by Win-R (run dialog) and typing them in there.  Not sure if it still works in 8/10, but I'd wager it does.  It was the perfect setup for my server.

 

[Christopher (Drashna)]

Ugh ... 

Hiding drive letters has it's issues too....  Such as they can still get bumped.