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Disk Space Equalizer doesn't equalize in real-time?


gd2246

Question

I have 4x8tb & 2x5tb drives and would like to use the Disk Space Equalizer plugin to keep them all at the same percentage filled. The initial re-balancing did exactly that, but afterwards if you have Do Not Balance Automatically ticked, it seems to revert to adding new files to the drives with the most free space (in my case the four 8tb drives only).

 

I also tried checking Allow Balancing Plugins To Force Immediate Balancing. I was afraid it might shuffle files other than the ones being added, but instead it seems to have no effect and the files continue to be added to only the 8tb drives.

 

I'd like to keep the new files spread out among all six drives because I also use SnapRAID and this would minimize my downtime in the event of a rebuild. But for this reason I can't have it shuffling files other than the new ones I'm adding because that would invalidate the parity file.

 

I'm sure once the 8tb drives get filled enough it will start using my 5tb's, and I'm prepared to live with that if there's no other way, but I was just wondering if there's a setting I'm missing that will allow the plugin to do it's job in real-time. I thought it would replace the default behavior of adding new files to the drives with the most free space to adding them based on percentage of drive filled, but unless I'm missing something it only works with a manual balance after the fact. And in that case it would end up moving files that were already there instead of just the new ones.

 

Would appreciate any clarification/help.

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Well, by default, new files are placed with the most available free space, measured absolutely.   So, it will use the 4x 8TB drives first. When there is about 3TB of data on the drive, it will switch to using all of the drives.

The Disk Space Equalizer forces it, but may default to percentage. 

 

But no, this balancer doesn't "balance" in real time. 

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Just to clarify, when you say "The Disk Space Equalizer forces it, but may default to percentage", do you mean only with a balance after the data has been moved into the pool? There is no way to use the plugin to make it so the new default is to add new data to to the disks with the biggest percentage of free space rather than simply the biggest amount?

 

If not, it would be nice if you would consider adding that in the future. By using the smaller disks immediately it would keep the parity file as small as possible, allowing for the fastest possible rebuild in the event of a drive failure.

 

Thanks for responding btw, I would have checked back earlier but I didn't think you'd answer so fast. :)

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