3 drives, 2 pools, desire to keep origional 'path'

[LightsOn]

Hi All,

 

Just trying out drivepool for the first time.  I wanted to see if my thinking is correct with a scenario before I dive it.

 

I have x3 drives.  Drive B is a direct copy of Drive A as a backup.  Drive C is a clean empty drive.  I want to split Drive C into two partitions.  I then intend to create x2 drive pools and in one pool add one partition of Drive C and also Drive A, and then in the other drive pool add the remaining partition of drive C along with drive B.

 

I then intend to copy all contents from Drive A to its respective pool and also all contents from drive B to its respective pool.  Thus I hope to then end up with two “pools” with larger capacity but essentially as they were before.  The only difference will be the path.

 

So – to my question:  at this point can I open up say “mini tool partition wizard” and copy the name and drive letter of Drive A and swap it with the details of its respective pool and do the same with drive B and its respective pool?

I want to do this so that all the settings I have elsewhere (for example where MCE records TV to etc.) would not need re pointing as although the physical drive has now become a pool the path to data remains – correct? Possible?

 

Thank you in advance for any guidance.

 

 

[Christopher (Drashna)]

To clarify, 

 

Drive A and Drive B have identical contents at the moment. 

You want to add these drives to separate pools, and add half of Disk C to each pool.

And then mirror the pools (or back up to one). 

 

Then that shouldn't be an issue. However, you' need to add the contents of the drives to the Pool manually.

To do that, add Disk A and Disk B to their own pool (I don't know which version your using here).  Don't use Disk C yet, nor add it to a pool.

Once you've done that, enable "Show hidden files".

Then go to Disk A, and copy it's contents into the hidden PoolPart.xxxx folder that you should now see.

Then repeat the same for Disk B.

Then use Disk Management (run "diskmgmt.msc") and partition Disk C. 

Then add the different partitions to the different pools.

 

Once you've done all of that, you should see the contents in the pool drives.

 

At this point, you may want to change the drive letters.

[LightsOn]

Hi Christopher,

 

Thank you for the reply - I appreciate it allot.

 

So I have done all discussed - you did indeed understand me correctly.  All seems to have worked fine.  I did cut and paste, and not copy and paste, as there was not enough disk space otherwise but all worked great all the same.

 

I can confirm changing drive letters has sorted my issue over paths - so this worked as I had hoped it would.

 

I have made a purchase of a licence. Great stuff - thank you. 

[Christopher (Drashna)]

You are very welcome!

 

And I'm glad that I understood you correctly. Sometimes, it can be hard to tell. And a small detail can change ... well everything.

 

And "Cut and paste" or "move" is what I meant to say!

 

And I'm glad that this has solved your issue. And I'm glad to hear that you've purchased a license!

 

 

And I apologize for the shameless self-promotion here, but have you considered checking out StableBit Scanner as well (if you haven't already)? It monitors the SMART data of the drives, and does a periodic surface scan. These help keep your drive healthy, and let you know when there is a problem (hopefully before anything bad happens). Also, if you have both installed on the system, StableBit DrivePool will pull data from StableBit Scanner. It will use that data to evacuate any disk that is marked as damaged (or optionally that has SMART errors, or prevent placing files on disks that have exceeded their rated temperature as they're more likely to fail).  

And you can get a discount on StableBit Scanner if you've purchased StableBit DrivePool.