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Moving drives


talex

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Hi,

 

Just finished changing over a WHS v1 to WSE 2012, purchased drive pool and am getting ready to add some drives to the pool before copying over data.

 

My server is in a Norco 4220 case (20 bays), I am not sure of final placement for the drives just yet - the disc management add in helped me keep track of which drives were in which location and I have not decided how to best "label" the drives so that if one fails I can find it in the case.

 

Anyways if I start a new pool and add some drives, what happens if I later re-locate that drive to a different location in the case? Will drivepool automatically know which drive this is and everything will keep chugging along or will that create problems?

 

Thanks,

 

Tom

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DrivePool will recognize the drive, regardless of it's location and letter. So relocating the drives shouldn't be an issue at all.

 

As for identifying the drives... well, I have a Norco 4220 as well, and yeah, it can be troublesome.

However, you can mount the disks to folders, which may help:

http://wiki.covecube.com/StableBit_DrivePool_Q4822624

Additionally, In StableBit Scanner, you can specify a "Case" and "Bay". This information is actually displayed in DrivePool as well, if both products are installed on the system.

I use this option to label each "rail" (or row) in the box as a case (eg, Rail 1, Rail 2, etc) and then label the bays as 1-4, for each. That makes identification super easy. And you can "group by case" in Scanner, for even easier visual separation.

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Excellent - and Yep I bought both products... getting files transferred before installing scanner... will have to look into that ability to define the locations, should make and excellent partner product to my Essentials 2012 home server.

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I'm glad to hear it. :)

I wasn't sure if you had purchased StableBit Scanner already, so I wanted to make sure you were aware of the option.

And to set that information, you'll need to right click on a disk and select "Disk Settings". There are a number of other things you can set here, but the two options I'm talking about are at the bottom.

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I should have all the files moved soon, then it's setting duplication and installing Stablebit Scanner. Is there an order you recommend doing this for speed? Does scanner slow things down a bit, not knowing exactly how it all works under the hood I would think I should turn on duplication and let that finish and then install scanner - but maybe it's makes no difference?

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What would save you time, I am pretty sure, is if you first set up the Pool with duplication and then move the files to the Pool. Files will be written to two disks real-time. Duplicating data that is already in the Pool is something I have never been able to do quite as fast. It can take a long time.

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I seem to have run into an issue. Last night I turned on duplication I have about 3TB of data in various folder, when I awoke the screen was sitting at 42.3% "Duplicating...." After seeing no progress for about and hour I decided it was time to reboot - Windows installed some updates then re-booted a couple times. Upon starting up DP it went through a process "Checking...." (42.3%) - that seemed to finish after about 45 minutes, now it's been sitting back at "Duplicating..." (42.3%) for about an hour.

 

There are ALOT of small files (Tens of Thousands of Mame, SNES etc ROM files) so I know duplication will take some time but this seems crazy and I am not sure how long to wait and what to do if I am to take action.

 

Any suggestions? I currently have 5 1.5TB disks in the pool, would adding a 6th maybe jar something loose"? I don't see anything in any logs to indicate issue's. Stablebit scanner did detect one bad sector on 1 of the drives but I don't see how that could be the problem... I am perplexed.

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Side note, if one of the drives has a bad sector, wouldn't DP then migrate everything off that disk? Or has it been repaired already?

 

Another side note, you have 3TB that needs be duplicated which gets to 6TG on 7.5TB of disks, leaving 0.75TB *net* free space? Yes, I would add another drive and check whether files are moved off of the one with the bad sector, you may need another or at least repair that one.

 

Other than that, I was serious. IMHO, duplicating (and de-duplicating as well BTW) takes a lot of time. I am not surprised and would not be concerned. Well, I would but I would know I most likely needn't be. It definately takes longer that a simple copy and, well, copying 3TB of data...is already 8.5 hrs at 100MB/s which is very fast for disks running full and doing small files. The only thing I am not sure about is how DP would react to adding/removing drives when already in the process of duplicating. I actually think it'll work out fine but it'll take time. Shitloads I fear.

 

Perhaps you could post screenprints of DP and Scanner?

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Here are some screen shots

 

00101_cbCqk7ry6sT_600x450.jpg

 

00v0v_6Kx9boWqSWw_600x450.jpg

 

 

42.3% still.... BUT I the duplicated GB and Unduplicated GB have changed - this image shows 475GB Dup, 2.06TB UnDup and the current screen shows Dup = 5.51GB, UnDup = 2.01 TB...

 

So it must be working but the % graph is not updating as you would excpect because the .% should have changed.... as long as it's working I can live with that although at the rate it's going it will take the remainder of the weekend.

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Are you comfortable with the SMART warnings?

 

I would not be surprised of the 42.3%, all of a sudden, turned to 100%. Unless the guys that actually know tell you otherwise, I'd advise to leave it as is and trust it'll work out itself. Then, I'd really check the drives...

 

One thinhg I do not understand, are you copying files over to the Pool as well? 475GB Dup + 2TB undup could, IMO, end up as 4.75TB Duplicated maximum...

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I have many of the files copied, there are a couple of drives I still need to copy to the pool which will then get added to the pool after this duplication is complete. I have 6 more drives to add which are newer and once I get all the data in the pool I might remove the drives that have smart warnings. I have about 10TB total data but have a few 2TB drives on the way to backup the entire server (drobo also on the way), just want to get everything transferred, put in the duplicated pool before I put this back in my server rack at which time I will deal with any smart or drive issue's as needed.... for now just getting this WHS v1 to Essentials 2012 r1 transfer completed and have to do a little "dance" with the drives to get it all done.

 

IN case your curious - the server build (which has run WHS v1 excellent):

 

  • Norco 4220 Case
  • Gigabyte GA-MA785G-UD3H Mainboard
  • WD Black 2.5" 320GB System drive (new, replaced same drive which ran WHS v1 for almost 5 years).
  • Athlon 9600 Quad Core CPU (changed since WHS v1 which was a x4 9550)
  • 4GB DDR2 (thinking of upping this to 8GB as 2012 E Seems to eat a lot more memory)
  • 2x Supermicro SASLP-MV8 controllers (PCI-e x4)
  • Intel Gigabyte network adapter (PCI-e x1)
  • Ultra 750 PS

 

b.t.w. is there any recommendation on where to locate the PC backup folders? Should that be in the pool, in a separate pool or??

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If you can, you might want to stop copying more files to the Pool and first let it stabilise. Then copy to the Pool as those "new" files will be duplicated on the fly, way faster. Also, there is no real reason why you could not add those other drives to the Pool already.

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That is what I am doing, letting all the current data duplicate and stabilize, then I will add the other drives. I want to add them 1 at a time to the pool so I can name them for their slot in the case and I am naming all the drives by row and column number... once I rename them I know the data has been moved and then I add them to the pool...

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Ya it was 551GB.

 

It's seems to be going well other then the % indicator is not updating.

 

Currently Unduplicated = 1.75TB - Duplicated = 1.07TB so it's chugging along, "other" changes but stays roughly around 2GB, I have no clue what that is.

 

looks like in about 1 3/4TB it should be done, then I will add the other drives 1 at a time, copy the files, format, rename to correspond with their physical position in the case and add to pool... those should go much quicker - they are all 750GB drives with larger files on them (mainly ISO from my TechNet and MSDN subs).

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All makes sense then, It'll be fine.

 

"other" is data on the drives but outside the poolpart folder, i.e., data on the drive that is not part of the pool (and is not intended to be). Nothing to worry about. Mostly, AFAIK, contents of the SystemVolumeInformation folder which *can* grow large (especially if you have shadow copies enabled with larger endowments of space) but clear out in time.

 

Actually, http://community.covecube.com/index.php?/topic/37-faq-unduplicated-vs-duplicated-vs-other-vs-unusable/ explains it best I guess.

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You wouldn't happen to know what would happen if I stop the duplication process? Right now I turned on pool duplication and everything is in the pool under shared folders. The folder that I think is taking all the time would be the ROM's folder which is about 1.5 to 2TB. I changed my mind and think I will just put all that on an external drive but wonder what would happen if I turn off the duplication, move that folder then turn it back on again...

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Sorry if I missed anything, but you guys have been busy today! :)

 

The reason that duplication may be taking a LONG time is simple:

We are not using the normal priority to copy the files. This means that you're not going to see the normal speeds of a file copy. 

Specifically, we use a background priority to move files around. For duplication and balancing. That means this can take significantly longer if you have a LOT of files. 

 

 

However, you can check C:\ProgramData\StableBit DrivePool\Service\Logs\Service" for the log files and see if it's hanging up on any specific files. It could be erroring out a lot. Especially considering all those SMART warnings.

 

Also, depending on what the SMART status on those drives indicate, that could be a factor as to why it is taking so long. If the disks are not in good health, it could cause the file operations to take longer (I've experienced that myself, on certain types of SMART errors.

 

And yes, if the disk is marked as damaged (bad/unreadable sectors), DrivePool will actively move data off the disk and avoid using it. I personally recommend going a step farther and using the StableBit Scanner balancer to force DrivePool to evacuate unduplicated data off of any disk with SMART warnings. 

Leaving duplicated data may be fine though....

 

 

However, if you're okay with tweaking files to maximize performance, then you may want to take a look at the post here:

http://community.covecube.com/index.php?/topic/574-optimal-advanced-settings/&do=findComment&comment=3516

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Thanks drashna,

 

I understand it can take a long time and I am not faulting Drivepool at all, was just thinking of stopping the duplication because there is 1 particular folder that has  thousands and thousands of small files, these I don't want to lose but they also don't need to be in the pool (I should have thought that out better) but there are other files I don't want to risk so I was considering stopping the duplication process, moving that folder out of the pool then restarting the duplication process because I will be moving them as soon as it finishes, I just don't know the way to go about that. I have a bunch of folders under Serverfolders which resides the pool and I set duplication at the pool level and I should have set it at the individual folders... don't know the best way to revert that is where I am at now although the process will probably finish by noonish tomorrow at the current rate then I could zip and move that folder which is causing the delays.

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Well, to temporarily stop duplication, it's as simple as stopping the StableBit DrivePool Service. That stops .... well, everything, basically. The UI won't be accessible, etc.  Once you've moved the files out, you could then start the service back up, and everything would go on as normal.

 

As for changing duplication status, you can do it per folder, without any problem. 

For details about the duplication stuff, see the following blog post:

http://blog.covecube.com/2013/10/stablebit-drivepool-2-0-0-420-release-final/

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