Ordered File Placement Plug-in - Should it Override Default Balancing Rules?

[HTWingNut]

Should the "Ordered File Placement" plug-in override the default balancing of DrivePool?

I have "Ordered File Placement" placed at the top of the balancing list.

Does "Do not balance automatically" need to be checked when using the "Ordered File Placement" plug-in?

Because if I don't turn off auto-balancing it seems default balancing rules (span across available drives) will automatically override the ordered file placement plugin.

If I manually click "re-balance" even with "do no balance automatically" selected, it also does not respect the "Ordered File Placement" plugin rule.

Thanks.

[Shane]

The higher the plugin in the list, the more priority it gets. Having the OFP balancer at the top would make its rules override all other balancers.

Selecting "Do not balance automatically" means none of the balancers should activate unless "Allow balancing plug-ins to force immediate balancing" is also selected.

If the OFP balancer has "Only control new file placement" selected, then try changing that to "Control new file placement and move the existing files into the pre-defined order" instead.

Alternatively, you may wish to try either of the "SSD Optimizer" or "All In One" balancer plugins instead (link) as they also include the functionality of the OFP balancer.

[Lawrence Guillot]

Another thing to consider is with each checkmark on the options the system will execute them.  If you set the all at defaults it will work fine but change one plugin and not the others you may get problems.

Think of if this way.  Each plugin is looked at according to its place in the list and if it is checked or not.

Ordered File placement does one thing and it does it well.  I love it.  If you have several drives in your system, you can keep your drives always refreshing your data by rolling the data.

Only 2 things need to be checked at all if you want just Ordered File Placement.

I have mine just like this.

1.  Ordered File Placement

2. All In One

3. Stablebit Scanner

This one works great for me and Once a week, I move an empty drive upward on Ordered file placement to move files to the new empty drive.

Hope that helps

 

[Shane]

Any particular reason you have Scanner last? I am under the impression that it's recommended to have the Scanner as highest priority if it is being used, since it will only evacuate if something is going wrong and at that point you would presumably want it to be able to tell all other balancers not to interfere with evacuating.