Balancer rule to only allow duplicates on HD not working

[Beaker1024]

So I have a new hard drifve that I thought I'd give a few months before I let it have any unduplicated files (to be safe).

 

So I went into the balancer rules and found the "Drive Usage Limiter" and unchecked the box for "unduplicated" next to the new hard drive.

 

Doesn't seem to be working as the main panel shows mostly unduplicated files being put on this hard drive.

 

I've attached screen captures to show you what I mean.  I couldn't do a screen capture with the hoover display on the hardrive form the main panel to really show how it's mostly unduplicated but you can see the bar's color.

 

I'm I missing something?

 

Screen Captures removed

 

EDIT - NOTE: I just did a massive "seeding" today (but no file seeding on new HDD obviously) and it's been less then 24hrs.  Does the duplication have to wait till tonight?  It's been working on balancing all day and say's it's 90% done with balancing.

 

Why do the I: and J: drives (same Hard disk) have a unduplicated target for them when I have it set to only allow duplicated files for that hard drive?

[Beaker1024]

Well I went into protect folders again to add a few to be duplicated. 

 

For some reason the main panel updated and now the blue arrow for the unduplicated target on the I:  J: drive letters (same disk) are now down to 0 (none) where a minute ago they were at 429GB or so!

 

UPDATE:

Even with the dark blue arrow at zero it's adding more files that are unduplicated to the drive.... wierd.  Maybe it's doing things alright and I'm not understanding something.

 

At this point I'm at 50% done for duplication.

[Christopher (Drashna)]

To clarify here, this depends heavily on the main balancing settings.

Check the "General" tab here. By default, should be set to balance immediately, but no more than once every X hours. 

This will cause the delay in balancing files here.

 

Additionally, if you're seeding the disks, you need to make sure that you reset the settings or remeasure the pool afterwards, or it won't properly update the status of the pool and won't balance properly.

[Beaker1024]

That makes sense.  I did do the remeasure now and the reset to defaults after the seeding.

 

It seems that changing the balancer rules while it's balancing doesn't take effect until it's stopped and started again.  Is that correct?

 

I've now gotten through an entire duplication/balancing pass and it seems happy and done with one exception.

 

The bar thing on the bottom isn't 100% and says:
"File Distribution not optimal"

"Files could not be moved to satisfy balancing rules......"

 

Is this something to worry about or a normal thing?

 

How do you really know when things are totally happy in the Pool balanced and Duplication side of things?

 

PS - I gave it a few hours and asked it to re-balance again.  It tried for a minute and stopped with the bar at the same point and the same message (and same amount of data size not optimally balanced).

 

My measurements seem to make sense... I've got only the exact amount of "Other" as the size of my Share for Client Backups which I didn't put into the pool (but the Drive is in the Pool).

[Beaker1024]

Chris & Alex - I found my answer. 
 

Now that I had a batch of files that refused to balance and I went into the "Balance - File Placement" tab things became much more clear.

 

You do have what I really wanted!!! You can click on the folder structure and it'll show you a bar graph of what drives and how much for that folder is on what HDD!!!!

 

This program has so many very nicely thoughtout features that are not obvious of shown through your website!   I think I've mentioned this in another thread but Alex has really written some amazing options/features (with the GUI to allow you to manage it!)  Screen captures or YouTube videos could really show this off.

 

So I'll tell you the strange roadblock I had to my balancing.  I had made it so the "Pictures Folder" is only allowed on one HDD (so files/folders wheren't scattered everywhere).

Of course I had it set to 2x duplication also.  It appears it saw this as conflicting!  I was saying make a duplicate but you can't put that folder on anything but this one drive! 

[Christopher (Drashna)]

Well, glad to hear that you have solved the issues!

 

As for the features, a lot of them are showcased and dug into on the blog. It may be worth looking at that, as there is some really good information there.

http://blog.covecube.com/

 

The manual tends to be more basic information, as to not overwhelm people.