Can you get a new pool to see the original HDD files?

[heartbraden]

I have 11 hard drives ranging from 1TB - 3TB, some internal, some external.  Instead of having JBOD I opted for Liquesce drivepooling for awhile so that I only had one visible hard drive in "My Computer" (other than my "C:"), that was the "M:/" drive with 23TB total.  After setting that up, I would go into the M: drive and it would list all the folders from all the hard drives in that pool.  However, I've run into several issues with that program so I've decided to try this one instead.

However, after adding all of my drives to a pool, going into the drive from My Computer shows that the drive is empty, even though it says "494 GB free of 23.1 TB" before you click it.

Hopefully I'm making sense, but I just want all the files and folders on my 11 hard drives to show up as one drive so I can have one place for all my files instead of having to look through hard drive after hard drive searching for the right thing.  Thanks!

[Christopher (Drashna)]

Completely makes sense. 

 

However, when you add a disk to the pool, it does NOT move the files into the pool automatically. We leave everything where it is, so you can continue to use the drives as you were, without interfering with your setup. 

 

If you want to move the contents into the pool, we do have a guide on how to quickly "seed" the pool.

http://wiki.covecube.com/StableBit_DrivePool_Q4142489

 

Since Liquesce seems to grab the entire file system, this guide will work without any modifications.

[heartbraden]

Looks like this worked perfectly!!  Thank you!  If this doesn't give me any problems, I'll definitely be getting the paid version

[Christopher (Drashna)]

Well, I'm glad to hear that!

 

If it does give you any issues, please do let us know, and we'll try to help you out with those as well.

 

Regards

[heartbraden]

Okay so all my files are correctly on the drivepool virtual drive so that my media center reads them from the right location... this part of it is working perfectly.

However, I've run into one issue:  When downloading with uTorrent to a folder on the drivepool, after about 15-30 seconds of downloading, the torrent will give an error, my system gives the "add/remove hardware" sound, two of my hard drive windows pop up (as if I've just plugged them in) and I get a DrivePool error about not detecting a specific drive.  The combination of two drives that seem to get disconnected and reconnected are not always the same hard drives, so that makes me think that it's not the hard drives messing up... but something to do with uTorrent downloading to a directory on the drivepool.  Any ideas about that?  Thanks!

[Christopher (Drashna)]

How are the drives connected?

 

USB, SATA, eSATA?

 

If SATA or eSATA, what controller are you using? And is it a controller card or the onboard ports?

If it's onboard, are you using the chipset drivers or the generic windows ones?

 

 

Also, check the event viewer (eventvwr.msc), in the system section, for disk or controller errors. It may have an indication as to what is happening.

 

And do this:

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

and replicate the issue.

[heartbraden]

Some drives are SATA, some are external USB (mostly 2.0).  The SATA drives are connected to onboard ports.  Not sure about whether I'm using chipset drivers or the generic windows ones - I would assume the generic windows ones.

I watched the Event Viewer while trying to download and it came up with lots:

Three of these in a row all in one second (2:28:48PM):
 

Warning: An error was detected on device \Device\Harddisk10\DR40 during a paging operation.

and two of these a couple of seconds after each other (2:28:48PM and 2:28:50PM): 

 

Warning: The system failed to flush data to the transaction log. Corruption may occur in VolumeId: E:, DeviceName: \Device\HarddiskVolume45.

(A device which does not exist was specified.)

 

One second later (2:28:51PM):
 

Disk 10 has been surprise removed.

and then 3 information level events 7 seconds later (2:28:58PM):
 

Volume Z: (\Device\HarddiskVolume46) is healthy.  No action is needed.

 

Volume P: (\Device\HarddiskVolume48) is healthy.  No action is needed.

 

Volume E: (\Device\HarddiskVolume47) is healthy.  No action is needed.

 

 

As you may have guessed, this time 3 hard drive windows opened up as if they had been disconnected/reconnected.


...so then I just tried replicating it again with DrivePool logging enabled, and now it's not happening.  haha.  Not sure what to think of that...  

[heartbraden]

Okay, I got it to replicate while logging.  Hopefully it will show something.  Should be uploaded now. 

[Christopher (Drashna)]

Oh, since this seems to be related to utorrent, are you pre-allocated the files?

 

Also, what OS are you using? And what version of DrivePool, specifically?

Edited October 15, 2014 by Christopher (Drashna)
https://stablebit.com/Admin/IssueAnalysis/10367

[heartbraden]

I do not have "pre-allocate all files" checked in the settings of uTorrent, should I?  I didn't know what it did until looking it up just now to be honest with you.  I'm on Win8.1 64-bit, using uTorrent 2.2.1 and DrivePool 2.1.1.561.

[Christopher (Drashna)]

In most cases, you should definitely "pre-allocate" files for utorrent. It prevents disk thrashing, and helps prevents the disk from filling up (well, it fills the files up first, so you know how much space you have left right away).

[heartbraden]

Still getting an error after selecting that option, it doesn't seem to make a difference in this case.  Did the log upload?  Did it show anything?

[Christopher (Drashna)]

The log did upload, and I've flagged the files for Alex (the developer). And he'll take a look at them soon.

[heartbraden]

Has there been any update to this yet?  I'm still unable to download reliably with uTorrent.  If this can be fixed in any way I will be purchasing the program as soon as my trial is up... but if not, I will unfortunately have to look for another solution.  I'm sorry I changed the topic of this issue in the middle of the thread, looking back I should have started a new one for the new problem.

[Christopher (Drashna)]

Unfortunately, there hasn't been an update yet. I've bumped up the priority so that Alex will get to it sooner, and I'll mention it to him directly.

[Christopher (Drashna)]

Update:

Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be any unusual issues in the logs.  

But if the drive is dropping in and out, and it's making the windows hardware sounds, then it maybe a hardware issue with the drives you're using. If they're USB, it may be that the load that utorrent is putting on them is causing the issue with the controller.

 

 

 

ANd specifically, how is your pool "laid out"?

[heartbraden]

Well there isn't just one drive that's dropping out.  It is always two or three drives at the same time, and they are not always the same drives.  When I download a torrent, sometimes it will go through just fine but other times it will make that add/remove hardware sound and pop up with 2-3 drive windows as if they had been unplugged/replugged.  Some of the drives this is happening to are external (USB) and others are internal (SATA).  uTorrent never had an issue before DrivePool was installed.  Not exactly sure what you mean by "laid out", but I have 1 SSD for my OS which is not included in the pool, and 11 drives (internal and external) ranging from 1TB - 3TB, all included in the Drivepool I titled Media, on the M:/ drive.

[Christopher (Drashna)]

Specifically, what I meant is are the drives USB/SATA/eSATA.

 

To be honest, I can't say that i'm surprised that a couple of them are USB. Some usb controllers have issues with heavy loads, as do the USB enclosure chipset. 

I would recommend making sure all the drives are securely connected. And that you're using good cables.

 

Also, do you have StableBit Scanner installed on the system? If so, could you run a burst test on the disks that are dropping out? This saturates the bus, and is good for identifying controller/cable issues.

 

And what USB enclosures are you using?

[heartbraden]

It looks like all of the hard drives that are disconnecting and reconnecting themselves are external, so good call on that one.  They are all using the cables supplied with them so they should be fine, but I could grab a few new ones on Amazon to be safe. 

I don't have the scanner installed, I wasn't going to install that until I had a little more room in my budget for extra hard drives to utilize it with, but I can try that.  How will I know if it is "working"?

I'm not using any aftermarket enclosures, I'm just using the ones that come with Seagate Expansions and WD My Books.  

[Christopher (Drashna)]

Yeah, unfortunately, the USB thing is VERY common (and allowed in the spec, IIRC).

 

As for Scanner, well, if you buy the combo, you get both at a discounted price. Of if you already have a license for DrivePool, you can buy Scanner at a discounted price (just ask, if you're interested).

As for being able to tell if it is working.... the Burst test window has a performance chart on it, so you can see the current activity. And once it's stopped running, it will let you know if it encountered any errors.

 

As for the enclosures.... those ones you can't really do much with, unfortunately.

To be honest, eSATA is a lot more reliable than USB, and if you plan on replacing the drives, that would be the better option in the long run. 

 

 

And I'd be curious to see if the issue persists if you change the download location to the USB drives in question, instead of to DrivePool.

[heartbraden]

The issue does not present itself when downloading to a specific drive, i.e. "E:/PoolPart.dsfiuetc/TV Shows/blahblah", only when downloading to "M:/TV Shows/blahblah"

I'll eventually replace all of the externals with internals in a NAS but I don't have that much wiggle room in my budget at the moment.  For now, is my best option to download straight to the drives until getting more reliable replacements for those externals?

[Christopher (Drashna)]

In that case, there is definitely a weird interaction here. I have downloaded to the pool directly without any issue in the past.

 

However, in your situation I would definitely recommend using a non-pooled location until you're able to replace the drives.

 

And a suggestion, eBay is a great solution. Both for getting new drives (be careful of the venders/sellers), and for getting rid of your old drives (to help pay for new drives).

[4Frame]

I haven't had any experience with torrenting directly to my pool, but that was a conscious decision on my part. My main pool consists of 4 disks that are only accessed for storing/retrieving VERY rarely, and they are set to go to sleep after 30 minutes. Obviously for me, I wouldn't want something like constant torrent activity keeping the drives awake (downloading, seeding, etc). So I came up with a cool way to transfer torrents only after they've been completed.  You may be asking "Why doesn't he just use the store downloading files here and completed files here option in utorrent", that wouldn't work for my setup since the completed location would be the pool, thus keeping the hard drives spun up from seeding.

uTorrent stores completed downloads to my C drive (the C drive is always on anyway). Then, an app called SyncBackPro detects the completed torrent files and copies to my pool. Afterwards, I use another app to delete the original torrent from my C drive after 2 weeks (allows for seeding to almost always finish after downloading, cause I like to seed). The 2nd app is called Belvedere, which is an app that detects file changes and can perform an action when an event is triggered. So basically, I told Belvedere to delete files/folders that are older than 2 weeks. Works great for me, especially with huge multiGB downloads! Keeps my 4 pooled disks sleeping, until the torrent is complete, and then it does its thing in the background without me having to touch a thing.

I do realize this might not help you or might be a complex setup, but I figured i'd throw in my two cents!

Strange that some people have issues with direct pool torrenting though, I'll have to test that one day.