Hard Drive Upgrades

[+BudMan MVC]

I am not talking about my job setup, where you have netapp filers, etc. My home network and computer equipment is all very budget minded. I buy disks when they are cost effective/on sale, etc

Drives are CHEAP even for smaller home budgets these days. Again I am not talking that you have backup space for your whole media library.. I am talking about having enough space spread across all your drives to be able to evacuate 1 disk in case you need to do something with it. If your largest disk is 3TB, then easy solution is to have a external 3TB disk..

Here is a 3TB external for 108$ to your door.. This solves your issue in one easy reasonable price purchase.

http://www.amazon.com/Seagate-Expansion-Desktop-External-STBV3000100/dp/B00834SJU8

For day to day you can use it for temp/scratch space - but when it comes down to it you could evacuate 1 of your online real use disks that needs work, starting to show signs of possible failure (like your current situation) and don't want to loose the files, etc.

What did you do with your older disks? Did you not have any disks, and then you bought all 3TB drives and filled them to capacity? For example I have some older 750GB drives, even some 250GB ones, etc. I also have a 1TB disk that I use in my PC along with my SSD that is about half full of junk/scrap/misc stuff and 3rd copy of files for backup, etc. If need be I could have that whole TB to move space off my storage drives. I have some older 750GB disks on my shelf, that not sure I would use day to day, etc. But if need arose I could copy files to them. I have a 1TB external that is just have I want to move some files over to my Son's house or give files to a buddy, etc..

If I need to evacuate a disk in a hurry, I have the space to do it is my point. If you do not have the space to evacuate 1 of your disks - be it to your laptop, your flashdisk, your SSDs, your phone and tablets even then you should really rethink your storage. So you have a disk showing some possible issues - but you have no where to move those files. What if you wake up in the morning and it now just dead??

Personally I don't have anything in my media storage that I am all that worried about loosing - yet I still make sure I have enough space to evacuate a disk if need be. A media library can always be rebuilt. But then again spending a couple of $ to have available space in pinch is $ well spent.

Are you saying this disk is 100% full? Or on the files on it more like 2TB? You don't have 2TB free if you add up all the free space on all your other disks? Really? If that is really the case your overbooked ;)

"I want my data safe, yes, but its not that simple."

I don't agree sorry.. There is a very simple solution to your predicament - get more space, its cheap!! Anyone that can afford to have TBs of Media at their fingertips can afford to not run it a 100% capacity! Your media library only needs to grow as fast as you want it too -- if your filling your disk to capacity before you buy more storage your not doing it right ;)

Maybe how I do it will give you some hints? When I see I am getting close to 80% usage on my library, I take a few minutes to do some clean up.. If I can not find enough stuff that I am willing to part with to give me breathing room. Then I look to buy more storage - its that simple!! If prices seem a bit high at the time, then I think about it a bit harder to what I can get rid of.. If I can justify to myself that I really do need more space then I keep an eye out for deals - this may take a few weeks, etc. Maybe I do some cleanup, move around some stuff that buys me more time, but you don't let it get to the point where ###### I can not even clear off this disk for 2 hours to allow me to run a low level format on the thing..

Even if you get this error worked out, you really should address your storage.. Are you running RAID? Does that make sense for media that can be replaced? To a point that you can not even work with a disk that is having issues>?

[+longgonebn Subscriber²]

As you should know, I am using Stablebit drive pools.. I have 5TB free.....but its spread across all drives, and each one does not have enough space. Though I should double check that lol

 

And I don't find $100 cheap. I may have that money, but I don't have that much where I'd spend $100 on a drive over anything else that I may need.

 

Of course, I want to make sure I always have space available, but I only have 1 SATA port left (and no, I am not building a whole new system that has more sata ports). So I don't feel like filling that with another 3TB when I could gain much more space with a 6TB, but of course that's very expensive. I know, right now I should be thinking about the one drive, but still. 

 

For me, my systems don't need backing up, all my important stuff, and even music/photos and things like this are already cloud based. Even most settings and things like this are backed up in the cloud.

 

So my storage is video media only. Its not important, but I have had to rebuilt my collection many times and I do not want to do that anymore. And well, HD content takes up a lot of room. We aren't even at 4K yet lol

[+BudMan MVC]

So you have 5TB free in the pool, how much space is on the drive you want to play with?  And how much of its free space is making up that 5TB?

 

You can not delete or move pool data to other disks that are not in the pool - just as temp solution?  What does drivepool tell you when you want to remove the disk from the pool?  You mention you have 3TB disks in the pool, with 5TB free -- how many disks total in the pool?

 

So what did they say when you put in the ticket with the info your seeing?  I can not believe they have not already answered you.. Any time I have put in a ticket I have gotten response either within hours or next morning.