Problems with uptime of my DrivePool on an USB enclosure

[Roger79]

I use an 8-bay USB enclosure to store my hard-disks for my DrivePool. Over the years I have noticed that the pool tend to stop responding or lose some of its drives when the pool is getting low free space. Only solution I've found is to turn off the computer and enclosure, disconnect power to enclosure -> turn it on to empty the psu -> connect the power-cord again and then turn everything on. The pool will now work for approximately 24-36 hours. When the pool is not responding nothing happens when I try to open it in explorer and all files are inaccessible from other network devices. Windows is also less responsive when the pool has stopped and most times I need to do a reset. I am not sure how much space that's left on the pool when these problems start to occur, and if it's a percentage of the total pool size or if it's available space per hard-disk that cause the pool to stop responding. If I'm going to guess it's probably less than 8% of total pool space. 

I have also experienced this in the past with another setup, where I used a workstation with internal drives(no USB enclosure). At that point I was so fed up with this problem that I thought going for something completely different would fix my problems.

I hope you can give me some pointers to what's the cause and how this can be fixed.

Roger J.

[Roger79]

Update:

After some long time testing I've concluded that the USB contoller on my NUC6i3 was the problem. I connected the enclosures to my HTPC and I had no problems with the pool the next 30 days. Bummer... :-(  , but also a relief to finally know why I had such problems.

I'd like to say thanks to Christoffer for giving me some pointers in finding the cause of my problems.

I have now made the decision of turning my 5-year-old high end gaming pc into a VM-/file-server. I bought some extra RAM, and a LSI SAS-card to get enough ports and speed for my drives.

Now I have to get myself familiar with Hyper-V and how to set up VMs. A lot to learn, but I'm enjoying the entire process.

Thanks.

 

[Christopher (Drashna)]

Well, I'd be inclined to blame this on USB (since USB has a number of issues that could cause this sort of behavior, actually), but if you were seeing the exact same thing before with internal drives... 

If you could, enable drive tracing, let this happen, and then disable tracing.
http://wiki.covecube.com/StableBit_DrivePool_2.x_Log_Collection

Also, run the StableBit Troubleshooter, and use "3895" for the Contact ID.
http://wiki.covecube.com/StableBit_Troubleshooter

[Roger79]

Sorry for VERY late response to this post. I have just now uploaded the logfiles.

I have also some additional information. In an attempt to fix my problem I bought the HighPoint’s RocketStor 6114V 4-Bay USB-C RAID Storage Enclosure. It took less than two days before the disks inside lost their Connection. At the same time four disks lost their Connection in the ICYBOX enclosure leaving only one disk operational. I also see that DP remeasures and check duplication consistency every two hours or so after I started using the Highpoint enclosure. 

[Thronic]

Could it be the 90% default balancing rule in the prevent overfill plugin that starts overloading your USB array when trying to move things around continuously (will it actually do this, Christopher?)? USB is a very fickle thing and hubs/backplanes/controllers are extremely different in stability and actual bandwidth/multiple device handling. 

Slow drives, using system drive, and/or overfilling too much could have given you similar symptoms on SATA.

[Christopher (Drashna)]

On 12/4/2018 at 7:41 AM, Roger79 said:

. I also see that DP remeasures and check duplication consistency every two hours or so after I started using the Highpoint enclosure. 

StableBit DrivePool only remeasures if there was a missing disk.

So more than likely, it's dropping connection and reconnecting them.

On 12/4/2018 at 7:41 AM, Roger79 said:

HighPoint’s RocketStor 6114V 4-Bay USB-C RAID Storage Enclosure

To be blunt, I am NOT a fan of HighPoint stuff. It's cheap quality stuff, with horrible OEM firmware.

On 12/4/2018 at 7:41 AM, Roger79 said:

It took less than two days before the disks inside lost their Connection. At the same time four disks lost their Connection in the ICYBOX enclosure leaving only one disk operational.

The IcyBox is using USB, as well? 
If so, are they both connected to the same USB controller on the system? 

 

If so, that may be your culprit. 

[Roger79]

I found a driver update at highpoints website and I'm trying it out to see if there's some improvements...

[Christopher (Drashna)]

I hope so! 

[Christopher (Drashna)]

I'm sorry to hear that that was definitely the issue.  But I totally understand the relief there. It's mixed, but at least you know what the issue is, and going forward is easier.

And hyperV can be a lot of fun.  If you haven't already, check out HVRemote.  It may make remote management simpler.