Jump to content
  • 0

CloudDrive free space with FTP


kuba4you

Question

Hi.

I haven't found any detail on that topic, so I'll try it this way: I have created a CloudDrive on a FTP-Server with a local Cache-Drive. Except for the space the local chache files are using, the CloudDrive doesnot show how much space has been used or is free.

I have attached a picture as an example: I have uploaded about 10GB in total. I have in the meanwhile cleared the cache drive and uploaded another 4GB, which are shown in the diagrams.

Status.png

Link to comment
Share on other sites

9 answers to this question

Recommended Posts

  • 0

The free space listed in the UI is not actually indicative of the drives/volume's free space.  It's the amount of free space on the provider, compared to what is actually used,  in regards to the drive's capacity. 

 

On 3/22/2019 at 5:30 AM, kuba4you said:

I have uploaded about 10GB in total

Bandwidth wise?  

Specifically how/where are you counting this?  Because that will influence how that size is reported. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 0

Thanks for the response.

Since I have access to the FTP-Server I can check the effective size of the data uploaded. It would be great to see in the UI how much of the given CloudDrive I have created is actually still free and at which point I have to create another one or increase the existing. Currently I have to check manually how much data is already stored there. Further I find the graph for the CloudDrive not very useful if you don´t know how much space is taken. DrivePool for example does show that with the local drives.

Additionally my cache drive a strange behavior. Although I have a 50GB limit the uploads are already throttle when I hit about 22 GB of data on the cache drive. Why is that? I have deaktivated the pin metadata and directory option.

For clarification: I want to use the CloudDrive as Backup-Drive therefore I use a sync my local data with a cron job with the CloudDrive data. Initially I copy the data by hand since the Cache limits the data I can upload in one go.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 0
11 hours ago, kuba4you said:

It would be great to see in the UI how much of the given CloudDrive I have created is actually still free and at which point I have to create another one or increase the existing. Currently I have to check manually how much data is already stored there. Further I find the graph for the CloudDrive not very useful if you don´t know how much space is taken. DrivePool for example does show that with the local drives.

I think there might be a fundamental misunderstanding of how CloudDrive operates here. Christopher can correct me if I'm wrong, but my understanding is that CloudDrive, as an application, is simply not aware of the filesystem usage on the drive. Think of the CloudDrive software as analogous to the firmware that operates a hard drive. It might be able to tell you if a particular portion of the drive has been written to at least once, but it can't tell you how much space is available on the drive because it simply doesn't operate at that level. In order for CloudDrive, or your HDD's firmware, to be able to tell you how much space is available for a particular purpose, it would have to somehow communicate with the file system--and neither does that. DrivePool, on the other hand, does. It operates at a file system level, and, as such, is aware of how much of the space on the disk is actually currently in use.

Another way to consider it is this: NTFS does not generally modify data on delete. So if you delete a file, NTFS simply marks that file as deleted and remembers that the space used by that file can now be used for new data. As far as the drive is concerned, nothing has changed in that area of the drive, but NTFS still considers it available. If that makes sense. So from the drive's perspective, that space is still used, even though the system doesn't actually look at it that way.

This is one of the distinctions between a tool like CloudDrive, which operates at a block-based level like a local disk drive, and a tool like Google File Stream or rClone, which operate at a file-based level, and are aware of the file system itself.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 0

Thanks for the explanation. Generally I find it a bit confusing that you specify a drive size  for the CloudDrive although you will never know how much space is taken. So basically I have to upload data and at some point I will get the message that the drive is full. This might be a feature request, but CloudDrive could check how much data is already on the CloudDrive and compare it to the specified drive size. Otherwise I have to do it manually by checking via FTP-Software how much data I have uploaded.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 0
12 hours ago, kuba4you said:

Thanks for the explanation. Generally I find it a bit confusing that you specify a drive size  for the CloudDrive although you will never know how much space is taken. So basically I have to upload data and at some point I will get the message that the drive is full. This might be a feature request, but CloudDrive could check how much data is already on the CloudDrive and compare it to the specified drive size. Otherwise I have to do it manually by checking via FTP-Software how much data I have uploaded.

Again, CloudDrive itself has no way to know that. You specify a size because that is the amount of space that CloudDrive creates in order to store things, but whether or not space is available for USE is simply not something that the drive infrastructure is aware of. The file system, at the OS level, handles that information. You can always, of course, simply open up Windows Explorer to see how much space is available on your drive. But at the level at which CloudDrive operates, that information simply is not available.

Furthermore, the drive size can contain multiple volumes--so it can't really just look at some particular volume and compare it to the amount of data on the disk, even if the amount of data on the disk WERE representative of the amount of space available for new information. Which, again, it is not--because of how NTFS works. It would have to look at ALL volumes on your drive and compare them to the maximum size, and even knowing what volumes are on what drives requires access to the file system which it, again, does not have. 

You're talking about adding entirely new levels of infrastructure to the application to accomplish something that can be accomplished by looking at ANY other disk tool in Windows. Simply looking at Windows Explorer, Disk Management, or Resource Monitor can provide you with volume usage information. The charts provided in CloudDrive are for the purpose of monitoring the usage on the provider, not the drive. Other tools exist for that, but no other tool exists to provide information about the provider usage. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 0

Maybe I misunderstand this discussion, but wasn’t the initial question: Why does CD not show an information about the filling level of the drive in the GUI?

This information is indeed missing in the GUI but only for certain types of cloud drives (FTP, File Share, OneDrive). For other drives (Google based) these values are presented in the GUI under “Local”, “Cloud Used” and “Cloud Unused”. Isn’t this also the same, what Windows explorer would show about all cloud drives of any type (like it does for real hard drives)?

So, where does the different GUI reporting come from?

Snap_2019.04.08_22h25m33s_002_.png

Snap_2019.04.08_22h23m55s_001_.png

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 0

To be clear: None of those show how much of the drive is actually used by data in the same way that the system sees it. CloudDrive simply cannot tell you that.

For some providers, like the local disk provider, all of the chunks are created when the drive is created--so "Cloud Unused" isn't a relevant piece of data. It creates the chunks to represent the entire drive all at once, so the amount of space you specify is also always the amount of space used on your storage device--in this case, a local drive. 

For some providers, like Google Drive, CloudDrive does not create all of the chunks at drive creation. It only creates the chunks and uploads them to the cloud provider when data is actually written to them by the system. But the "Cloud Used" number is not the amount of space used by the system, it's the amount of space out of the total limit of the drive that you created--and it will not drop if data is deleted from the drive. Once the chunks are uploaded, they will be modified in place if data is removed from the drive. 

It may be helpful to use an example. Let's say you create a 100GB drive on Google Drive, and you set a 5GB fixed cache. At first it will tell you that a few hundred MB are used on the cloud, and that the cloud unused is 99.9GB or something similar. Then let's say we put 100GB of data on the drive. The local amount will basically be our cache, or 5GB, the cloud used will now be 100GB, and the cloud unused will be some number very close to 0. Then let's say we delete 50GB of data from the drive. The local will still probably be 5GB, the cloud used will still be 100GB, and the cloud unused will still be something close to 0. Why? Because all of those chunks are already created, and they still exist on the cloud provider. CloudDrive doesn't know if those chunks contain available space or not. CloudDrive just knows that there are X number of chunks representing Y amount of space stored on the cloud provider. Your system is what knows whether or not that data is available for use--because it's the OS that manages the file system that tracks that data. Windows Explorer will report 50GB free on the 100GB drive, but CloudDrive will still be reporting the space that it has used and available on the provider. Note: Chunks are not removed from the provider once they have been created unless you resize the drive itself, because there isn't any reason to remove them unless you actually change the size of the drive. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Answer this question...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...
×
×
  • Create New...