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Another Cannot Remove Disk issue


gtaus

Question

Last week I had a 5TB HDD failure and tried to remove the disk via DrivePool's GUI. It was unsuccessful. I did get an error message to run chkdsk on the HDD to correct the problem. Unfortunately, chkdsk corrupted the directory and I was left with no data on that drive. Total loss.

Today, I have another 6TB HDD that is misbehaving according to DrivePool. So, once again, I tried to remove the HDD using the DrivePool GUI. Again, it was unsuccessful and gave me an error message to run chkdsk on the HDD. NO WAY am I going to fall for that trap again. So I am currently moving data off that drive manually to other drives using TeraCopy. What I have discovered is that there are a few corrupt files on that HDD that cannot be moved. At least with TeraCopy, it will automatically skip over those corrupt files and continue to move the rest of the files on the list - and then give you an error report of the failed files at the end of the task. So I don't have to babysit the transfer of files over the next ~10 hours.

Questions:

1) Why is DrivePool unable to remove the drive when I have all 3 boxes checked to remove the drive and just to leave the failed files on the HDD? It appears to me that the remove task is erroring out when it hits the first corrupt file and does not try anymore.

2) If I have a HDD checked for removal, and it errors out, does DrivePool lock out that drive from the pool and not allow any new files to be written to it? I have ordered a couple new drives to replace these drives, but can I continue to use DrivePool without worrying about data being written to the drive marked for removal?

3) Since I am unable to remove the drive from within DrivePool's GUI, can I physically pull that drive out of the pool, then when DrivePool lists it as a missing disk, can I remove it then? After that, am I able to manually transfer files off that pulled disk back into the pool as is, or do I have to rename the PoolPart directory on that drive so DrivePool does not see it as part of the pool again?

I don't believe there is anything physically wrong with this current 6TB HDD. It reports at 100% Health, 100% Performance, and No error reports in SMART. Maybe related to the 5TB HDD failure of last week, for some reason, I got a few corrupt files thrown on this 6TB HDD. My intention if to vacate all data on this drive, run a few integrity tests on it for good measure, and assuming it passes, I will reformat the drive and put it back into DrivePool.

Let me end with saying something positive about DrivePool. Although I am having a few issues with a failed drive and now some corrupt files on (what appears to be) a good drive, with DrivePool I am still able to manually vacate the files off the drive, leaving only a few corrupt files on the drive that are causing me a problem. When I had problems with my old RAID and Storage Spaces pools, it was game over and I lost everything. This is another case that confirms my decision to move to DrivePool, and that is when you do have a HDD problem, chances are good with DrivePool that you might be able to minimize your loss and recover almost all your data.

 

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4 hours ago, Shane said:

After a quick test with a pair of USB drives, the answers to #3 are "yes you can instantly remove a missing disk" and "you should rename its PoolPart folder before reconnecting it otherwise it returns to the pool".

@Alex, @Christopher (Drashna), could either of you answer #1 or #2?

Thanks, @Shane for the answer to #3. Just wanted to be sure before I messed up things. 

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22 hours ago, gtaus said:

1) Why is DrivePool unable to remove the drive when I have all 3 boxes checked to remove the drive and just to leave the failed files on the HDD? It appears to me that the remove task is erroring out when it hits the first corrupt file and does not try anymore.

@Shane, for your info and consideration...

UPDATE: I just finished manually moving off all good data of this drive. I am happy to report that all but 12 small corrupt files were able to be saved. It took me ~36 hours to remove the data manually, but in the end, almost everything was saved.

After all the uncorrupted files were moved from the HDD (leaving only 12 small corrupt files), I tried once again to remove the drive within the DrivePool GUI, checking all 3 boxes to remove the files and leave the damaged files on the drive. Again, DrivePool was unable to remove the drive and errored out. It appears to me that DrivePool errors out the first time it hits a corrupt file and stops the remove task altogether. I don't understand what difference it makes to mark those checkboxes to remove a damaged drive and leave the damaged file on the drive. It did not work in my case. Moving on... 

Clicking on the error details in the DrivePool GUI, I got the message once again to run chkdsk on the drive to repair the problem(s).

This time I knew that I only had those 12 corrupt files left on the drive, so I first ran chkdsk without repair. It reported that there were errors on the drive and I needed to run a repair. So I ran the scandisk with repair, Windows fixed the drive, but deleted all the remaining folders and files on the drive. It also deleted the PoolPart directory. I mention this because, when DrivePool GUI errored out on the remove disk task, it told me to run the scandisk repair. IF I would have run scandisk with repair when the HDD was full of files, and the handful of corrupt files, I think it would have wiped out my entire drive like it did last time with the other drive I had that recently failed.

SUGGESTION: I suggest that if DrivePool cannot remove a drive from within DrivePool's GUI, then the error details info box should state something like "Remove files manually first and then attempt a scandisk repair." 

I was going to test out my question #2...

23 hours ago, gtaus said:

2) If I have a HDD checked for removal, and it errors out, does DrivePool lock out that drive from the pool and not allow any new files to be written to it? I have ordered a couple new drives to replace these drives, but can I continue to use DrivePool without worrying about data being written to the drive marked for removal?

...but the scandisk repair deleted all folders and files, including the PoolPart on that drive, so it was no longer in the pool and I could not test to see if DrivePool would have written new files to a drive that was marked for removal and in an error state.

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5 hours ago, gtaus said:

This time I knew that I only had those 12 corrupt files left on the drive, so I first ran chkdsk without repair. It reported that there were errors on the drive and I needed to run a repair. So I ran the scandisk with repair, Windows fixed the drive, but deleted all the remaining folders and files on the drive. It also deleted the PoolPart directory.

Um. Given your earlier troubles, I'm beginning to wonder if there is something rather wrong somewhere with your computer. Bad cable, bad controller, bad something:wacko:

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52 minutes ago, Shane said:

Um. Given your earlier troubles, I'm beginning to wonder if there is something rather wrong somewhere with your computer. Bad cable, bad controller, bad something:wacko:

That's the trouble with computers. It can always be a bad something that is not detected. I am not too concerned that 4+ year old HDDs are dying, I kind of expect they have reached the end of their life cycle, and certainly beyond their warranty period. So far, it's only my older HDDs that have failed. If I had a bad cable or controller, I would think that would affect my new drives as well. It has not.

If anything, I suspect my external USB drives are running too hot. They have passive cooling and it might not be enough. I am running Hard Disk Sentinel and I see that my external USB drives are always hotter than my drives in the MediaSonic ProBoxes. Of course, the MediaSonic ProBoxes have a cooling fan so they should not overheat.

 

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On 1/7/2021 at 6:32 PM, gtaus said:

1) Why is DrivePool unable to remove the drive when I have all 3 boxes checked to remove the drive and just to leave the failed files on the HDD? It appears to me that the remove task is erroring out when it hits the first corrupt file and does not try anymore.

This can happen if the PoolPart folder itself is damaged/corrupted.  Part of the removal process is marking the drive as "removed".  But also, it has to be able to read from the folder, as well.   File system corruption can stop both. 

nn

On 1/7/2021 at 6:32 PM, gtaus said:

2) If I have a HDD checked for removal, and it errors out, does DrivePool lock out that drive from the pool and not allow any new files to be written to it? I have ordered a couple new drives to replace these drives, but can I continue to use DrivePool without worrying about data being written to the drive marked for removal?

While it's removing, yes, it should. Afterwards, no.  But you can use the Drive Usage Limiter to prevent files from being placed on the drive, and to move files off of the drive.

On 1/7/2021 at 6:32 PM, gtaus said:

3) Since I am unable to remove the drive from within DrivePool's GUI, can I physically pull that drive out of the pool, then when DrivePool lists it as a missing disk, can I remove it then? After that, am I able to manually transfer files off that pulled disk back into the pool as is, or do I have to rename the PoolPart directory on that drive so DrivePool does not see it as part of the pool again?

Even better is the "dp-cmd"'s "ignore-poolpart" command.  This immediately ejects the drive from the pool.  This doesn't move the drive contents, but only marks the disk as "removed" from the driver. It will show up as "missing" in the UI, and then you can remove it from the UI. 

And from there, you can absolutely move the contents of the "poolpart" folder on that drive back into the pool. And ideally, using the "skip existing files" option to speed things up. 

 

 

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On 1/9/2021 at 1:45 PM, Christopher (Drashna) said:

Even better is the "dp-cmd"'s "ignore-poolpart" command.  This immediately ejects the drive from the pool.  This doesn't move the drive contents, but only marks the disk as "removed" from the driver. It will show up as "missing" in the UI, and then you can remove it from the UI. 

Thanks for the response @Christopher (Drashna). Is "dp-cmd"'s "ignore-poolpart" command a command line prompt? If so, is there a section in the DrivePool manual, or elsewhere, that explains how to perform this task. It sounds like a much more sophisticated method to eject a trouble drive than actually pulling it out of the rack.

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On 1/11/2021 at 2:43 PM, Christopher (Drashna) said:

It's a command line tool, yes.  And no, there really isn't a manual for it, but the tool should be pretty self explanatory (as each command has a good deal of info). 

 

Thanks for the response, @Christopher (Drashna). I lsearched the tool online, and it says that the command line tools are built into DrivePool v2x, but I cannot find the tool. How do I access the DrivePool command line tools? I can't find it on the DrivePool GUI nor in the C:\Program Files\StableBit\DrivePool directory. Thanks.

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