How can you keep all files within a folder on the same drive?

[Leader2light]

Basically, I want all my folders files to be kept together on each drive.  

I am trying to prevent having Folder A be created on several disks, with its contents spread across those disks.  Then I have 3 folder A's each with part of folder A's contents.    

I have had to shut down a pool before and its a pain to have several disks, all with same folders, but incomplete files spread out over several disks.  Then I need to merge them together to get back to normal. 

Does this make sense?  And is there a solution?   

[Jaga]

You'll want to use File Placement Rules on folders to ensure they stay on specific drives.  Balancing settings, File Placement tab, Folders tab.

https://stablebit.com/Support/DrivePool/2.X/Manual?Section=File Placement

If your files are currently spread out over multiple disks (per folder) you will want to setup the desired rules, then initiate a re-balance to have it move them into place.

[Leader2light]

57 minutes ago, Jaga said:

You'll want to use File Placement Rules on folders to ensure they stay on specific drives.  Balancing settings, File Placement tab, Folders tab.

https://stablebit.com/Support/DrivePool/2.X/Manual?Section=File Placement

If your files are currently spread out over multiple disks (per folder) you will want to setup the desired rules, then initiate a re-balance to have it move them into place.

I understand the rules and that's fine for a few folders, but I have thousands of folders and I don't really care what disk they are stored on, so long as it is on one disk and not spreed out over many disks...Does this make sense?  Is there some way to set this up?   Also, all my thousands of folders are all within 1 folder if that makes a difference.  

[Christopher (Drashna)]

28 minutes ago, Leader2light said:

I understand the rules and that's fine for a few folders, but I have thousands of folders and I don't really care what disk they are stored on, so long as it is on one disk and not spreed out over many disks...Does this make sense?  Is there some way to set this up?   Also, all my thousands of folders are all within 1 folder if that makes a difference.  

That's a common request, actually. 

And the answer is: 
There isn't away to do this currently.  This isn't a simple request, actually.  Yes, I understand that on it's surface, it is very simple.  But the problem is how to handle that in the code.   

First, we have to compute the relationships between files, folders, subfolders, etc, and keep that in memory (or somewhere), then we have to check to see if a folder will actually fit on the disk.  And what happens when it can't?  What data should be split? Etc. And then repeat this process for each folder on the disk.

In kernel space too.... (and that would significantly impact performance)

"complicated" isn't the beginning of how do describe this issue. Unfortunately.

 

That said, the "Ordered File Placement" fills up one disk at a time, and is much more likely to do this.  But it's a "best effort" rather than enforcing it.

https://stablebit.com/DrivePool/Plugins

[Leader2light]

Ok, I'm currently using the Ordered file placement.  

 

Maybe someday there will be a solution.  

[Jaga]

I think the generally accepted solution is:  Drivepool is a lifetime license, easily capable of being installed on any Windows platform and reading a pool that consists of drives from any other pooled machine (i.e. just connect the drives to the other machine and install DP).  Because of that ease-of-use just make the pool and use a drive letter for it, and don't even think about what files are on what physical disks.  Forget about them entirely - they are now merged into a new virtual disk.

The only reason I could see this as inconvenient was if you were thinking of individual drive portability.  Shutting the machine down, taking one drive somewhere else and accessing complete folders there instead of where the pool was created.  BUT if you're seriously contemplating doing that, just use pool duplication and you'll have completely separate copies of your files on multiple drives.

Methinks you're overworking the problem a bit.    Unless..  there is another reason you need the physical drives so ordered and structured that we don't know about.  There's a reason it's called pooling, and if that's not useful then perhaps the software isn't what you need.

You can *still* force specific folders onto specific drives, but to do it for thousands of folders you'll have to have a better hierarchical folder scheme.  Not just one top folder and thousands of sub-folders directly under it.  Sort them further by type, or by date, or by size, or by usage - anything to put them into deeper sub-groups so File Placement is more helpful.