Drivepool vs spanned drive

[dxfan227]

So I'm curious if I use drivepoool to pool 2 drives without any duplication...if one drive fails do I lose all data from both drives?

 

Is there a way to prevent that ( perhapes no balancing?)

 

If so what is the diff between drive pool and duplication vs spanned drive and mirroring?

 

Thanks!

[Umfriend]

I can answer the first: If one drive fails, you lose the data on that one drive. The other is still reachable. In fact, there is a hidden poolpart* folder within which all that data is simply accesible through explorer as DP stores everything in NTFS. It does not split files between drives (like raid 0 does).

 

Donnow what spanned drive and mirroring is unless you mean one of the RAID levels.

[Christopher (Drashna)]

Umfriend is right.

 

StableBit DrivePool is a file based solution. So any time you lose a drive, you only lose the files on that drive. The rest of the pool remains intact. 

However, we don't maintain a list of files that were on the pool, nor an "inventory system" (at least not yet). 

 

To help prevent data loss due to drive failure, we highly recommend installing StableBit Scanner. Not only does it monitor SMART data ("last minute warnings"), but its proactive about the disk health. It runs a surface scan on the system to make sure the entire surface is readable. This is called "refreshing" or "scrubbing". It can also trigger the drive's built in error correction and cause it to remap bad or "weak" sectors to slack space on the disk.

 

Additionally, if you have both products installed, DrivePool will pull information from Scanner, and evacuate a damaged disk automatically. This is done to help prevent data loss due to corruption.

 

 

@Umfriend, I'm pretty sure he's referring to the Dynamic Disk feature...

[dxfan227]

Umfriend is right.

 

StableBit DrivePool is a file based solution. So any time you lose a drive, you only lose the files on that drive. The rest of the pool remains intact. 

However, we don't maintain a list of files that were on the pool, nor an "inventory system" (at least not yet). 

 

To help prevent data loss due to drive failure, we highly recommend installing StableBit Scanner. Not only does it monitor SMART data ("last minute warnings"), but its proactive about the disk health. It runs a surface scan on the system to make sure the entire surface is readable. This is called "refreshing" or "scrubbing". It can also trigger the drive's built in error correction and cause it to remap bad or "weak" sectors to slack space on the disk.

 

Additionally, if you have both products installed, DrivePool will pull information from Scanner, and evacuate a damaged disk automatically. This is done to help prevent data loss due to corruption.

 

 

@Umfriend, I'm pretty sure he's referring to the Dynamic Disk fe.

ture...

 

Thank you for the quick reply. I am still curious to find out if there is a way to tell drive pool which files go on which disks. Like i mentioned before perhapes not using balancing? Ideally I would have 1 drive pool/ drive letter but movies on 1 drive and personal photos on the other drive. is this possible? 

 

In the event of a single drive failure, since as you mentioned there is no inventory system, This will also make  recovery easier since I'll know what was on that drive.

[Christopher (Drashna)]

Thank you for the quick reply. I am still curious to find out if there is a way to tell drive pool which files go on which disks. Like i mentioned before perhapes not using balancing? Ideally I would have 1 drive pool/ drive letter but movies on 1 drive and personal photos on the other drive. is this possible?

ABSOLUTELY!! 

You'll want to make sure you download the StableBit DrivePool 2.1 version, as the 1.X doesn't have it, but hte feature is called "File Placement Rules". It's located in the balancing options. And here are a couple of links that talk about the feature.

 

http://blog.covecube.com/2014/06/stablebit-drivepool-2-1-0-558-release-final/

 

http://blog.covecube.com/2014/04/stablebit-drivepool-2-1-0-503-beta-per-folder-balancing/

http://blog.covecube.com/2014/05/stablebit-drivepool-2-1-0-528-beta-file-placement-update/

http://blog.covecube.com/2014/05/stablebit-drivepool-2-1-0-553-rc-file-placement-and-product-3/

 

The rules are pretty flexiable and simple to set up. You should be able to do exactly what you want.

 

In the event of a single drive failure, since as you mentioned there is no inventory system, This will also make  recovery easier since I'll know what was on that drive.

 

Yes, definitely. 

As Umfriend mentioned, there are some apps that do that already, if you're interested.

[Umfriend]

I think there is at least one caveats there though. Suppose the Pool has X drives, each with their own type of files. Suppose one of the drives is full. The next file of the type of intended for that drive will spill over to one of the other drives. If that one fails, you've lost a file and you'd not know it. Of course, it would be sensible to monitor the use of individual drives then and ensure that scenario doesn't happen but still... (one of the reasons I prefer duplication & backup and dislike the idea of file placement rules).

[Christopher (Drashna)]

Well, the file placement rules has the option to "use new drives" for the rules, or not.

 

However, that still may lead to the issues you've mentioned.