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Questions about Duplication.


HTWingNut

Question

Is "Duplicated" amount that is shown on the main UI screen under "Manage Pool" equal to total amount used by duplicated files, so if all duplicated files are 2x then actual file space is half that?

For example, if I specify 5TB of data to be duplicated 2x, then the "Duplicated" value should read 10TB?

Also, I'm trying to wrap my head around how file duplication works. A duplicated file is seen as a single file by Windows.

Let's say I have a hard drive that dies, motor stops, head crash with platter, whatever (god forbid, please no).

If I pulled a drive from the machine and hooked it up to another Windows PC, will I be able to see/copy/move those duplicated files?

After a drive crash, will it start to automatically duplicate those files again with the remaining good drives?

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So AFAIK, everything DP reports wrt space is in terms of actual disk space. Assume a Pool of 2 x 10TB drives, x2 duplication except for one folder named UDF (UnDuplicated Files).
- Pool is empty and shows 20TB free
- Save a 1TB file to the Pool. The Pool will show 2TB Duplicated and 18TB free.
- Save 2 100GB files to UDF (two files because one would complicate a bit and cause Unusable for duplication, now one is on one drive, the other on the other). Pool will show 2TB duplication, 0.2TB unduplicated and 17.8TB free.

A duplicated file is indeed seen as a single file _assuming_ you access the file through the Pool / DP. However, a x2 duplicated file is stored on two HDDs. Each has a hidden PoolPart.* folder within which the file resides. If you access the HDDs directly, you can see two files. In the above example, if you pulled one HDD (so it is still working) and put it into another PC, then yes, on that PC you can simply navigate to the PoolPart.* folder and find all your, duplicated, files (unduplicated is a matter of chance of course). DP stores everything in plain NTFS so that is nice from a recovery point of view.

Now assume one of the 10TB drives crashes, hard. DP will put the Pool in read-only mode. You will add a new 10TB HDD to the Pool and remove (through the GUI) the faulty one. At that time, DP will check for duplication and find none are duplicated even though most should be. DP will then re-duplicate. Non-duplicated files stored on the faulty HDD are lost (barring recovery and/or actual backups).

I guess that's basically it.

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