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Changing Pool Drive: Copy data first to unpooled drive?


Umfriend

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Hi all,

 

I have DP2, full duplication of just two 2TB drives. I need to replace one of them (rising sector allocation error count).

I could just:

1. Remove on of the drives from the pool (how would DP deal with duplication if one of the two is removed?)

2. Remove the drive from the server

3. Add new drive to the server

4. Add new drive to the pool.

 

However, I get the feeling that removing takes some time for DP to process and adding a new one may take a very long time (in background, whatever checks it does etc).

 

So, I am wondering whether it would not be quicker to:

1. Copy all data from pool to a third non-pooled drive (already present in system)

2. Delete all files from pool

3. Perform steps 1 to 4 above

4. Copy all data from third non-pooled drive to pool

5. Delete all (copied) files from third non-pooled drive.

 

The _only_ disadvantage I can see is that I would be deleting shared folders and I am not sure whether those would be reinstated (although, I could of course just delete the contents of those 12 folders).

 

Total size of unduplicated data is about 600GB.

 

Any advice?

 

Kind rgds,

Umf

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The graceful way is to click Remove on the drive in DrivePool and select the Duplicate later option.  This will leave duplicated files on the disk.  The removal should be fast since all your files are duplicated.  Duplication will occur when you add the new drive to the pool, if you have real-time duplication enabled.  The risk here is that you will only have 1 copy of your files in the pool until the new disk is installed and the duplication process has completed, but you will also still have your duplicated copies on the disk you removed if you should need them.

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There is also a "force remove" option, that will skip file errors, instead of stopping at them. This will allow you to remove a damaged disk that is having issues. 

 

However, it may leave files in the "PoolPart" folder (which will be exposed once it's removed from the pool). You may want to copy these manually, just in case.

 

 

 

Alternatively, you could add this third disk to the pool, and manually move the contents of the failing disk to the other drive. (or just remove the disk afterwards and let DrivePool handle that).

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OK, the removing thing I am not so worried about. It's primarily the adding.

 

 

Duplication will occur when you add the new drive to the pool, if you have real-time duplication enabled.
I'm not sure real-time duplication has any influence here, that only applies, as I understand it, to new files written to the pool. That is what I would accomplish in my scenario. In the graceful way, DP would do duplicate in the background and, as some have written, that may take a long long time (might well be due to other issues of course).

 

 

 

However, it may leave files in the "PoolPart" folder (which will be exposed once it's removed from the pool). You may want to copy these manually, just in case.[
I do not understand this. I thought removing a file always left ALL files that were on the disk intact (which in my case with a 2-drive duplicated should not be hard). Or is this relevant for, say, a 3-disk 2x duplication setup where one disk is removed?
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For duplciation: this affects new files mostly. However, when realtime duplication is enabled, it will also make passes periodically to ensure that the files are duplicated properly. 

If it is disabled, then it will only check once a day (2am by default).

 

 

As for disk removalL

When you remove a disk from the pool, the content is moved to other disks in the pool. Depending on the size of the disk and the amount of content on it, this can take hours.

However, both the "Duplicate later" and "force removal of damaged disks" options will leave files on the pool. (and may make the process quicker).

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OK, but in a 2-disk pool with duplication, there is not much to move, is there? In my experiance (with DP 1.x) it would actually leave the files on the removed disk, unhide the poolpart folder but not add new files/changed files to the disk-to-remove as only the other is part of the pool.

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For the most part, yeah, probably not much to move. Depending.

 

As for the removal, regardless of the version, it tries to move everything off of the disk by default. Again, unless you use the "Force removal" option. 

And in both versions, any files it doesn't move will be left in the PoolPart folder, and the folder will be made visible.

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