A "Freeze Pool for Backup" Mode?

[Breeze]

As a relative noob with DrivePool, I've basically installed it and haven't really played much with the defaults. However I do have an issue: I'm using it with WHS 2011 mainly for client backups and I'd like to be able to backup the entire pool to external media for off-site storage. My client backup is now about 3.25 TB and will likely grow over time so it's outside the scope of the built-in WHS Server Backup feature as far it's not designed to handle over 2TB of client backup data.

 

I see files being redistributed among the drives through the balancing routines and I'm counting on Scanner to clear out a drive when it starts going bad. I'm quite happy leaving this setup do what it's designed to.  I have 5-1TB drives installed, and can go up to 7, specifically because they'll be easier and faster to vacate and replace. But all this management means that the pool is essentially in a constant state of flux.

 

An offline backup of the pool would be possible with 3rd party disk copy software but this is a problem if the pool is constantly changing. It would be very handy to be able to essentially freeze the pool and curtail ALL pool-shuffling activity while doing such a backup.

 

Maybe this is already there? Or maybe I'm not seeing this clearly. Actually, it would be pretty cool if DrivePool had a built-in backup routine to backup it's own data, but that's probably outside the scope of the program.

 

Interested in any comments or opinions on the above. Thanks.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Christopher (Drashna)]

Well, all the balancing and duplication is handled by the StableBit DrivePool service.

 

You could stop the service, to prevent files from being moved around.

However, you could change the balancer settings to only run at a certain time of day (which may not be a bad idea, instead).

 

 

Additionally, if you have a large enough backup drive, you should be able to use the Server Backup option. The main issue is that it cannot backup volumes larger than 2TBs. However, if you're backing up multiple 1TB drives, you should be fine.

 

Also, as for "constant state of flux," once the pool has duplicated and balanced the data, even adding a lot to it shouldn't significantly move data around.