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3TB in unusable for duplication


Marc

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Dear SB team,


I run a small home server with 4 disks and use Drivepool with 2x duplication (haven't figured out how to setup snapraid).  Unfortunately, Drivepool reports 3.03TB in "Unusable for duplication". I read the forum and noticed the advice to install the plugin "Drive equalizer", which i did. I have forced re-balancing in Drivepool several times in the hope that this will reduce the unusable space, but it went from 3.05TB to 3.03TB. I'm not sure what I need to do to claim the 3TB back.


I would like to highlight one issue which I had, not sure if relevant. I inserted the Raw 6TB drive into the server and for some reason it converted it to MBR. I realized this late and Drivepool had already transferred a considerable amount of data to the disk. I used EaseUS Partion Master to convert without data loss the MBR drive to GPT. Then I extended the 2TB partition of the drive to the full 5.5TB. I had no problems with my Drivepool after this, but 3TB showed as unusable for duplication.   

 

Advice is much appreciated.

 

 

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There is a bar just below in the GUI called Pool Organization. I suspect that if you hover above it it will say something like file placement not optimal or somesuch. To the right there is a small arrow through which you can Re-balance. That, I think, would help.

Mind you, in your current setup you will always have slightly over 1TB unusable at least. This is because with x2 duplication. DP will not write duplicates to the same disk. Let's say one duplicate is placed on either E or J, then the other will be placed on D. E+J equals 4.43TB, so that is the max you can store on these. J would then have the other duplicates for 4.43. The remaining 1TB can not be used. This can be solved by as little as adding a 1TB HDD.

One other thing, if you have Scanner then I would _always_ have Scanner as the #1 balancer.

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Thank you for taking the time to help me on this issue, that is much appreciated. I have pushed the Re-balancing arrow a couple of times, with increasing the priority to speed it up. It does start copying files but stops after max 15 min, with no effect on the unusable space.

What you suggest with the disk, is this something I could optimize by creating partitions? I have all my four slots occupied.

I do have scanner. I didnt change the balancing settings, just added and enabled disk space equalizer after reading a forum thread on unusable space for duplication.  What would you recommend as the sequence of balancers (i put scanner as 1 again and equalizer as 2nd). 

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What does the bar say when you hover over it?

There is a way to "optimize" this by creating partitions and I strongly advise against it. Doing that would negate the whole idea behind duplication as you might possibly have the two duplicates of the same file located on one physical HDD which may fail. I think you either need some way to attach more drives or now replace the smallest with a larger one. I see you have a Server backup HDD, what OS are you running and what do you backup?

I have to say that the Disk Space Equalizer seems weird to me. As far as I can tell I have two Pools with the same settings, both only Scanner and Disk Space Equalizer but they behave differently.

What I would try if I were you is to turn off Disk Space Equalizer and turn on Duplication Space Optimizer instread (but always Scanner as the #1).

 

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Yes indeed partitioning a disk is a bad idea with duplication. That's a good point! I changed the balancers as suggested and the targets per disk moved immediately. I posted new pictures below. If i press the triangle it runs for a short period and goes back to this light green pool bar. 

I will let it run for 24 hours and see what happens. Thanks again for the input!

 

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OK, so this does seem weird to me. It is not right but I do not know how to fix this. I hope Christopher will join in soon.

One thing, and this is a bit embarrassing, but I have found that just rebooting and trying again does the job quite often. No clue why and successful with many things.

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OK So i restarted as suggested and run several re-balancing sessions. Unfortunately the 3.0 unusable disk space remains. I'm starting to think that the re-balancing in my case will not solve the issue. Somehow Drivepool does not recognize the 3TB space as usable and that also impacts the re-balancing. It might be the fact that i extended the drive after it was in use by Drivepool.

Should i remove the drive from the pool, re-initialize and format and return it to the pool? I rather not, but if it is the only way...

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