File Placement Rule not being Followed?

[Shu]

Hi All,

I have what I believe to be a fairly "simple" drivepool setup but I can't seem to get the File Placement rule to be followed. I have two folders for which I have a rule that says "do not place on drives 1-4" (image below)

 

As you can see from the bottom left section, files from those folders still live on the drives I unchecked (01, 02, 03, and 04). My pool is only about half full (so each drive is only about half full).

I am using these balancers/plugins in this order: SSD Optimizer, Drive Usage Limiter (drives 01-04 have unduplicated files unchecked; the plex folder is duplicated by 2x), StableBit Scanner, Disk Space Equalizer (by percent), Volume Equalization (although, I don't *think* I need this?), Prevent Drive Overfill, and Duplication space optimizer. 

 

Can someone more knowledgeable than I help me here? 

Thanks! 

[Shu]

1 hour ago, Christopher (Drashna) said:

Specifically, the "SSD Optimizer" uses the "drive is being emptied" option, so can if that option is checked (default), it means that the balancers (SSD Optimizer) won't follow file placement rules for the SSD drives, and will empty them, regardless of the rules. 

Unchecking the "unless the drive is being emptied" means that it will always respect the file placement rules. 

In both cases, it will still work as a write cache. 

Okay, I unchecked "unless the drive is being emptied" and I manually ran a "re-balance". Didn't seem to work. The files were still there.

However, I went into the rules for those two folders and I switched the overflow setting from 90% to "never allow files to be placed on any other disks" and I ran a re-balance again and it worked! The folder structures are still present on those drives but they don't have any data in them (0 bytes). (Also, as extra info, none of my drives are more than 50% full). 

I'm not sure exactly which solution worked but I will say that checking "Never allow files to be placed on any other disks" and unchecking "unless the drive is being emptied" are the last two steps I took before it worked.

Thank you, @Christopher (Drashna) and @Jonibhoni

[Jonibhoni]

1.  There might be a rule active for a subfolder of "Plex". Could you check on the "Rules" tab if there might be another rule that overrides the general "Plex" one?
2. On the "Settings" tab, have you checked "Balancing plug-ins respect file placement rules."?

[Shu]

On 7/8/2022 at 7:06 AM, Jonibhoni said:

1.  There might be a rule active for a subfolder of "Plex". Could you check on the "Rules" tab if there might be another rule that overrides the general "Plex" one?
2. On the "Settings" tab, have you checked "Balancing plug-ins respect file placement rules."?

1. I checked the Rules tab and there doesn't seem to be a sub-rule. It's "\Plex\*" which I'm taking the * to mean "including subfolders". The only other rule there is for the Plex_Downloads folder (which also has an * following). 

2. I do have that one checked. 

I tried turning off Disk Space Equalizer, Volume Equalization, Prevent Drive Overfill, and Duplication Space Optimizer. I've gone in an manually tried "re-balancing" (from the arrow next to the green bar at the bottom) a few times but that doesn't seem to have done much? Those 4 drives still have Plex files on them.

[Jonibhoni]

Strange, hmm...

How is your SSD Optimizer set-up? Do you have at least 2 drives marked as SSD and the rest as archive?

And if you open *gear icon* -> *Troubleshooting* -> *Service log* after you have done a "re-balance" attempt, is there anything with error or warning or critical level?

[Shu]

1 hour ago, Jonibhoni said:

Strange, hmm...

How is your SSD Optimizer set-up? Do you have at least 2 drives marked as SSD and the rest as archive?

And if you open *gear icon* -> *Troubleshooting* -> *Service log* after you have done a "re-balance" attempt, is there anything with error or warning or critical level?

I have two SSDs (one sata and one m.2 (sata; C:)) set as SSDs. I have a screenshot of the other settings below. 

Just did a manual rebalance while the pool was inactive. I looked at the Service Log but I had a bit of trouble reading it. There were no dates and the time seemed off? The top of the log was a few minutes ahead of the current time (currently 15:28, top of log was 15:30:43.5) and the bottom of the log was 19:10:43.9. Most of the log entries were a repeat of the same thing "Balance not critical", "setting background I/O Priority", "is file placement clean = True", "critical balance ratio = 0.9, balance ratio = 1.0", and whatnot. 

[Christopher (Drashna)]

https://dl.covecube.com/DrivePoolBalancingPlugins/SsdOptimizer/Notes.txt

Quote

* If you've created file placement rules that are attempting to keep files on drives that are designated as SSDs,
  then you should disable the "Unless a drive is being emptied" option, under the "File placement settings" category, 
  on the "General" tab. Otherwise, your File Placement rules will not be respected by this plugin (because it is 
  emptying the SSD drives).

 

[Shu]

3 minutes ago, Christopher (Drashna) said:

https://dl.covecube.com/DrivePoolBalancingPlugins/SsdOptimizer/Notes.txt

* If you've created file placement rules that are attempting to keep files on drives that are designated as SSDs,
  then you should disable the "Unless a drive is being emptied" option, under the "File placement settings" category, 
  on the "General" tab. Otherwise, your File Placement rules will not be respected by this plugin (because it is 
  emptying the SSD drives).

I will definitely try this!

Question: the file placement rules I have for those two folders do have my SSDs checked. My intention is not to have those folders "kept" on those SSDs (I do want them moved off the SSDs after they've "cached" from writing). By having my SSDs checked in the file placement rule, is that saying to "keep [those] files" on those drives? If I unchecked them from the rule, would it still work as an SSD write cache? 

I hope I'm making sense...

[Christopher (Drashna)]

Specifically, the "SSD Optimizer" uses the "drive is being emptied" option, so can if that option is checked (default), it means that the balancers (SSD Optimizer) won't follow file placement rules for the SSD drives, and will empty them, regardless of the rules. 

Unchecking the "unless the drive is being emptied" means that it will always respect the file placement rules. 

In both cases, it will still work as a write cache. 

[Jonibhoni]

7 hours ago, Shu said:

If I unchecked them from the rule, would it still work as an SSD write cache?

Afaik, yes. To my understanding, SSD optimizer cache functionality works with "real-time file placement limits", which kind of says where files are allowed to be put on *creation* / first write. The regular file placement rules kick in on (subsequent) balancing passes. So I would remove the SSD from file placement rules, if you don't want files to be archived there. (but I'm not using SSD optimizer myself)

Also, you could just try to temporarily deactivate SSD optimizer, to see if a subsequent re-balancing pass fixes the thing. Then we at least know who is the culprit.

10 hours ago, Shu said:

There were no dates and the time seemed of

(The log time is relative time since service start. So all fine here. )

[Christopher (Drashna)]

Awesome, I'm glad to hear it!