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New to DrivePool and need some suggestions and guidance with lots of SSD's.


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Let me preface by saying that I'm just using the trail right now, but following my rebuild (this week), and after my new drives arrive, I look forward to purchasing the license. So far, I'm really liking DrivePool and Scanner. Gonna get the bundle for sure!!

 

OK, so, I have a LOT of SSD's that I've acquired over time. Most were given to me second-hand, but all look good in SMART, and have all tested great. Now looking to do a complex pool.

 

I have a Dell PERC h310 HBA that  bought off ebay, which will facilitate eight SSD's as follows:

6x Plextor M6S in RAID10 as the OS volume.

2x Samsung 840 EVO RAID0 as a type of "landing disk".

 

Motherboard (ASRock  Fatal1ty Z77 Professional-M) controllers are:

Intel Z77: 4x HGST NAS 6TB HDD in RAID5 on Intel Z77

AsMedia ASM1061: (for Misc. 3Gbps SSD's and two 1TB hybrid drives)

 

My ultimate goal is to use the massive RAID5 volume to store just about everything. Movies, Recorded TV, Music, Documents, Pictures, etc. since it's independently redundant. (I understand on-board RAID5 isn't the most desirable, but it's the only disks on this controller, so I assume it should be fine.) I want to use the EVO's on the PERC as the "landing disk" to maximise writes to the RAID5 volume, and any older 3Gbps SSD's I would like to use to accelerate specific directories on the RAID5 volume. For example, I have a 128GB 3Gbps SSD, and this could be used to accelerate my Skydrive volume; then replace it with something bigger when time/money permits.

 

Now, one thing I would LOVE to do, would be to only have two volumes (drive labels) visible in Explorer; just to make it easy for my wife. That is to say that I just want to see the OS volume, and the Drive Pool volume. Is this possible with DrivePool, given my design?

 

Also, the new 6TB drives are replacing a set of 3TB drives. I know that DrivePool allows you to add populated drives, but would it be best practice to create the pool first, using empty disks, then copy my data over from the old 3TB dsks?

 

Thanks in advance for any help/suggestions anyone could provide. I'll try to answer any questions if more information is needed.

 

 

 

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Topic moved and merged. :)

 

 

Absolutely. Just remove the drive letters in Disk Management. StableBit DrivePool has no issue access drives without a letter or mount point.

http://wiki.covecube.com/StableBit_DrivePool_Q6811286

 

 

However, I would recommend mounting the disks to a folder path, so that you can access them when needed.
http://wiki.covecube.com/StableBit_DrivePool_Q4822624

 

 

Also, if you don't mind me asking, why not use the disks in a pool instead of a RAID5 array?

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Topic moved and merged. :)

 

 

Absolutely. Just remove the drive letters in Disk Management. StableBit DrivePool has no issue access drives without a letter or mount point.

http://wiki.covecube.com/StableBit_DrivePool_Q6811286

 

 

However, I would recommend mounting the disks to a folder path, so that you can access them when needed.

http://wiki.covecube.com/StableBit_DrivePool_Q4822624

 

 

Also, if you don't mind me asking, why not use the disks in a pool instead of a RAID5 array?

Honestly, I hadn't really thought about strictly using DrivePool in lieu of RAID5 too much. It makes perfect sense; but my initial plan was just to manage the OS and storage volumes using hardware, then use DrivePool strictly as an accelerator (since I'm too cheap to get a real RAID controller with SSD write-caching capability, like a MegaRIAD FastPath configuration). My thinking was, everything in the RAID 5 volume already has redundancy, but then duplicating out to SSD tiers would add another layer of redundancy and acceleration. The only things going out to the SSD tiers would be files requiring high availability or high redundency. The large remainder of the volume is a movie/television repository. Anyway; Is my thinking wrong? You're probably right though; I'd probably get far more use out of the available space just using the pool without RAID. 

 

Pardon me for being naive, but perhaps I am not reading your instructions properly. Shall I create the pool with all the disks (with unassigned drive letters), then mount the disks to NTFS folders within the pool?

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Well, whichever method works for you. However, just remember that if you need to add more storage, you'll probably be using DrivePool anyways, because it can be a PITA to expand a RAID array.

And there are some other advantages to passing through the disks and using DrivePool (namely, integration with StableBit Scanner).

 

However, your plans would definitely work well. 

But DrivePool uses duplication (file based mirroring) as opposed to parity. That may be a sticking point for you, though.

 

 

 

 

Pardon me for being naive, but perhaps I am not reading your instructions properly. Shall I create the pool with all the disks (with unassigned drive letters), then mount the disks to NTFS folders within the pool?

yes, you can do that. 

Specifically, DrivePool doesn't care about drive letters or mount points. It can use the drives with or without these. Having the mount points is for your convenience more than anything else.

So you can definitely set up the mount points after adding the disks to the pool, or before. Or just use all the disks without any mounts (folder or drive letter).

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