Q on going from Flexraid to Drivepool

[sitm]

Hello everybody,

 

I am using Flexraid right now only for storage pooling.

For licensing reasons I wanna change to Drivepool.

 

Flexraid is storing the files/folders in the following manner.

 

Example:

Disk1

          |___ Movies

          |___ Series

 

Disk2

         |____Movies 

         |____Series

 

and so on on the other 8 disks.

Movies on Disk1 contains i.e. a folder Elysium and some files of this movie (XMBC - .nfo, .jpg etc....)

Movies on Disk 2 also contains a folder Elysium with some other files that originally where all together in a folder Elysium on the source.

This may i.e. happen when during copying from source space runs out on Disk 1 and the folder Elysium is continued on Disk 2 or for some balancing-processes running (Source is a HTPC - the machine with Flexraid running is the backup-machine)

Movies and Series from the different disks is then merged into a fodler movies and afolder series on the storagepool with the content of all same folders spread all over the different disks.

 

I am aware I can move folders into the hidden folder created by Drivepool  on the single disks when the pool is created. So no time-consuming copying needed from the original source via network.

 

So - what will happen after I moved the folder Movies from disk 1 into the hidden folder on disk 1 and then move the folder movies from disk 2 into the hidden folder on disk 2. Both may also have folders with the same name as described above)

 

The pool already containng a folder movies.

Will there happen some sort of merging?

 

I am aware this might not be the best way to start with drivepool, but copying 20 TB over the net will take a reasonable amount of time.

 

Any hint appreciated.

Or bad idea at all and better do a fresh copy over the net to let Drivepool do its job what belongs to space-balancing and/or keep folders together when creating the pool and spreading the data.

 

Thanks a lot.

 

 

 

[Christopher (Drashna)]

This may not be exactly for your system, but it should give you an idea of exactly how to convert:

http://wiki.covecube.com/StableBit_DrivePool_Q5463715

 

And yes, the contents will be merged when it shows the pool's contents. For folders, this is fine and won't pose any problems. However, for files:

As for the pool, once it makes a duplication pass, if it detects the same files on multiple drives, it will check whether or not if it's supposed to be duplicated. If it's not, then it will delete a copy. If it is supposed to be duplicated, it will leave the copy.  However, if the files are different, but share the same name, it will prompt you about that (pool parts different).

[sitm]

Thanks for reply.

There are no duplicate files on the disks -- just many subfolders with the same names in folders movies and series on every disk.

 

This means I create folders movies and series on the pool before moving files from disks to the hidden folder. In the hidden folder I will then see a subfolder movie and a subfolder series.

 

Then I move contents of folder movies on disk 1 with i.e. a subfolder Elysium and some files in it to the hiddenfolder/movies on disk 1. 

Then I move contents of folder movies on disk 2 with a subfolder Elysium and some different files in it to the hiddenfolder/movies on disk 2.

 

Would mean converting to be quick and easy.

[Christopher (Drashna)]

Yes, that's exactly what it will do.

 

However, I wouldn't say it won't "complain". When it makes a duplication pass, it will note the number of copies there are, and how many there should be and copy the files or delete duplicates, as needed.

 

 

But yes, it will definitely "aggregate" the folder contents from both drives on the Pool. 

[sitm]

Thanks again.

Think I understood what to do.

Just want to be prepared - when dealing with 10 disks and 20 TB copying files again is to be avoided

[Christopher (Drashna)]

I can definitely understand that.

[sitm]

Done :-)

 

Went almost smooth - all 20 TB and 10 disks no under the "control" of Drivepool.

So switching from Flexraid-Storage pooling to Drivepool is easy going. Simply had to draw my 2 folder movies and series into the hidden folder on every disk and content showed up in the pool.

 

Only at the very beginning I had the issue my pool disappeared and I could not add my disks again with error "cannot add a disk twice"

Uninstalled - deleted a folder according to another thread - reinstalled and pool with already added disks showed again.

 

Will use Drivepool on my HTPC as well - task for tomorrow. No more fiddling around with junctions....

 

Write performance seems to be higher - I now get over 100 MB/s when copying over the net. However hard to judge and mostly a little unfair when comparing to Flexraid as the disks are now connected completely different as before. 2 external HDD-closures connected via E-Sata to my main-machine with Win8 whereas before they all where in a quite older machine with Win7.

 

Only thing i have to take a closer look at is the behaviour of Drivepool when the external HHD-closures are switched off --> Drivepool showing missing drives and when the HDDs come back I twice lost my settings - i.e. duplicating was activated although I deactivated it before.

 

Is there any best practice on this?

[Christopher (Drashna)]

Well, I'm glad to hear that (almost) everything went very smoothly!

 

Though as for junctions, DrivePool v2.1.0.443 should actually support them, if you really do want to use them.

 

As for the performance, you should see performance that is akin to a normal drive (as we're passing the operations directly to the disks). That and there are some performance tweaks too (the network IO boost).  But I'm glad that you're enjoying better performance, be it from the new hardware or the new software.

 

As for the externals, that's a tricky one.  Ideally, the disks should be left on for DrivePool.  The reason is, that any time disks go "missing" or are turned off, the Pool that they are a part of, well a) reports the issue, sets the pool into a read only mode. This is expected and normal. However, it may not be ideal for what you want.

Though, you should not be losing your settings. Could you upload the ErrorReports for us?

http://wiki.covecube.com/StableBit_DrivePool_2.x_Error_Reports

 

However, if you're turning the disks off for power saving, StableBit Scanner *may* be able to help with that. But that really depends on the controller and the disk though.

[sitm]

Junctions work pretty well for me on the HTPC - however I wanna get rid of taking care where there is still enough free space to put additional files and then put a junction in the destination where these files should belong.

 

Reason for switching off is these 2 external closures are the backups - so I don`t want them to be switched on all the time.

Somewhere I saw a thread creating a second "dummy"-pool.

 

Will see what I get.

 

Thanks so far.

[Christopher (Drashna)]

Ah, if you're backing up, that would make sense.

 

And yes, you can create a secondary pool, and copy the files to this pool. And once both (all) disks in that pool are offline, the pool would "disappear". That sounds exactly like what you want.

[sitm]

Latest experiences disconnecting the external closures whem computer is running.

 

Drivepool seems to go easy with this - I am able to put my pooldrive offline in Windows-Diskmanager.

When back online Drivepool recognizes this and puts pool online again.

 

However I am seeing some BSODs from the marvell-driver mvs91xx.sys driving the external closures.

So, Drivepool would be able to handle this, my OS (Win8) is complaining.

 

Not great of an issue as the enclosures are only the backups and not used all the time, so I will do a proper shutdown to switch off the enclosures.

Switching on while OS running is not an issue.

 

Migrating on the HTPC from simple use of junctions to Drivepool worked as well.

[Christopher (Drashna)]

Well, glad that it's working out for you, aside from the BSODs....

 

Actually, could you upload the dumps from these? Both the MEMORY.DMP file, and the contents of the minidump folder? Both should be in C:\Windows\. 

While I know the issue looks to be relaated the Marvell chipset (probably used by your controller, or the enclosure), I would like to be 100% certain.

Use the following link to upload the files:

http://wiki.covecube.com/StableBit_DrivePool_System_Crashes