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How to remove Drivepool completely


vorpel

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Hello.  How can I remove Drivepool completely?  I have Snapraid on the drives and I currently have Drivepool set to not duplicate. 

 

I am just looking for the best way to move my data out of the pool folder.  When I access the drive directly and try and cut and paste the data to the root of the drive I get an error that the file is locked by another program.  I have stopped the Drivepool service and set it to manual, and after rebooting I am getting the same issue.

 

I am running Windows 8.1

 

Thank you very much.

 

-dc

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When it gives you that error, does it tell you what process is locking the files (such as "System")?
 

And it is possible (and very likely) that the Windows Search service is locking the files and preventing them from being moved.

 

 

 

Also, you could move the data from the hidden "PoolPart.xxxx" Folders on the pooled drives, but these may not be complete contents.

You could do this before or after uninstalling DrivePool. If you do so before, you still may run into the locked file issues.

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Thanks for the quick reply.

 

I'll check to see if I can find out what process it thinks is holding the file.

 

As for removing Drivepool.  So, I can uninstall Drivepool and then still be able to move the contents from the PoolPart.xxxx hidden folder to the root of the drive? 

 

When you say that the contents might not be complete - can you please elaborate on that?  Would files be partially on 2 or more disks?  I'm a bit concerned about that.

 

Thanks,

 

dc

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The files are stored on normal NTFS volumes, so you can absolutely access them after you have uninstalled StableBit DrivePool. And you can definitely access them on another system. 

In fact, if you had StableBit DrivePool installed on that other system, it would recognize the pooled drives and create the pool.

 

 

As for the "incomplete", I think you got the gist of it already. But to elaborate here:

When StableBit DrivePool adds contents to the pool, it's put on the drive with the most free space available, by default. That means that two files in the same directory may not be on the same hard drive. 

And those files are stored in the "PoolPart.xxxx" folders. That's the actual content of the pool (the folder we use to store the actual files).

 

Plugins such as the "Ordered File Placement" balancer change that behavior in specific ways. If you did have this balancer installed, then the contents of each folder should be on the same disk (or at least, is significantly more likely, as this is part of that balancers goal).

 

But barring that balancer, then yes, it is likely that the contents of any given folder may not be on the same drive. This depends on your system setup though.

 

 

 

Also, if you don't mind me asking, why do you want to remove StableBit DrivePool? Or at least the contents of the specific Pool?

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Thanks for the replies - they are very helpful.

 

I don't mind that the files are potentially on different drives - I'm not worried about that.  With my setup I have to have some type of pooling, otherwise it is way too big of a maintenance nightmare to consider.

 

Reason why I am uninstalling - I have a very complex setup.  My main server (running Windows 8.1 - going to redo it with Windows Server 2012 R2) has 24 drives connected to an Areca ARC-1680ix-24 raid card and present the drives as JBOD.  I have a second Areca ARC-1680ix-16 that connects 2 other systems via HP SAS expanders that add 24 drives from the second machine and 14 drives from the third.

 

The drive pool initially had just the 24 local drives, but over time I've added the other 38 drives (minus the 9 drives for snapraid triple parity on each server). 

 

For whatever reason, I'm having some stability issues, though it was working nicely for the past 2 months.  There are several issues that don't appear to be related and I am looking to deconstruct my setup to eliminate complexity and make troubleshooting a bit easier.  I am also looking to possibly start over with a better OS (I initially tried going with Windows 2012 R2 but my motherboard - Asus P9X79 WS - does not support it and I was having issues locating drivers back in June). 

 

I am interested in using Drivepool in the future, but I don't know if I'm having issues with it playing nice with Snapraid.  I only want the pooling feature - not any of the duplication or auto balancing as that messes up Snapraid.   I thought I had it configured that way, but there doesn't appear to be a lot of control over that.

 

Anyways - thanks again for all your help.  I'm going to tear the server down and replace the SAS to SATA cables as that might be one of the issues (drives randomly not showing up to the OS, but after reboots they do... mostly).

 

If there is a guide for using Drivepool with Snapraid - I would be very interested.

 

-dc

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You are very welcome!

 

And that's a very good reason. 

If you would be willing to do so, keep everything setup, but enable file system logging on DrivePool. It may give an idea of what is causing the issue, though.

http://wiki.covecube.com/StableBit_DrivePool_2.x_Log_Collection

 

And there are a few topics that talk about using DrivePool and SnapRAID (or similar solutions).

http://community.covecube.com/index.php?/topic/52-faq-parity-and-duplication-and-drivepool/

 

A few of the forum posts linked include discussions of how to control the duplication and balancing aspects of StableBit DrivePool. Which is presumably what you would like most of all.

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