[Split] Stablebit Drivepool setup info

[+longgonebn Subscriber²]

OK, you got me. So your Drivepool you use, can this be used with Windows? I want to do the pool options with Windows 8.1....any tutorials, or do I just install? Also, what if I already have media on one of the drives?

 

Cause yes, this isn't critical data, it's media and can be replaced (though 3TBs worth is a pain to replace lol, but as you said, most of the time it can be recovered).

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MOD EDIT - Topic Split from:

https://www.neowin.net/forum/topic/1189135-hard-drive-transfer-issues

Edited November 22, 2013 by Roger H.
Topic Split

[+BudMan MVC]

+riahc3 if your talking say 1 or 2 TB even in a raid 5.. with 500 or 750GB disks.. Sure go for it.. If that makes you happy.

Where you have a problem as the arrays get larger and larger and larger is even when the disk fails, your not going to be able to rebuild from parity. The larger the array, the larger the odds that you fail on rebuild. Now your whole freaking array could be lost.

Now if you want to throw up dual bay nas with 2x3TB disk in a Mirror - sure, this is cost effective and could save you lots of time in rerip if disk dies. I am curious about the pre populated nases that have 2 disks in them, did they come from the same batch, made right around the exact same time. What are the odds that both of those disks could fail right around the same time ;)

Here is an article that touches on the issue of recovery.. Its more for the enterprise, etc. And your not going to do data dispersal in a home/smb setup ;) The point to take away from the article is traditional raid is dead or dieing.

http://www.storagenewsletter.com/rubriques/market-reportsresearch/why-raid-dead-for-big-storage-cleversafe/

I just feel that today, you need to look at what your wanting to accomplish and the best bang for the way to do that. What we want is our digital copies to be easy to access and grow storage as library increases.. This is my needs atleast, the vast majority of my media does not require even backup, let alone parity from a hardware failure to stay online, etc. So why spend money on disks that are going to do nothing for you besides provide parity in a raid.. Seems like money down the drain to me. Could use that money to buy more disks to actual store data on ;)

[+BudMan MVC]

Drivepool runs under 8.1 yes - and yes you can have media on the drive already. Adding it to the pool does not destroy anything on it. It won't be listed into the pool, until you move it there.

With drivepool - you can access it disk directly, or just use the drivepool letter to access it.

So here is my "nas" just running windows 7.. This is just a VM, with RDM maps to the drives, so the vm has direct access and can read smart info from the drives

So see rdm1 F and rdm3 E, those are the 2 drives currently in the pool H: rdm2 i the disk I pulled out of the pool See below that the screenshot of the control panel for the software.

Now you can directly access disk via say F

See the other folders and files on there other than the pool folder. Those are not going to be seen in the pool.. But I can still access the disk and access those files, etc.

What is neat - is you can put these disks into any other system and access files under normal folders and names, they are just under the pool folder. So if the machine dies that was running your pool you can just move disks to any other machine that can read ntfs and access your files normally. And if you install drivepool on this new machine it will see that these drives were in a pool and recreate your pool for you. Its pretty slick.. You can change the way the software spreads the files among the disk.. You can say try and keep all drives half full, or evenly distribute all files, or fill up the disks before you start using the other ones.

Where you have files/folders you want to hedge your bets against about loss - you can duplicate them to however many disks you want or have in your pool

So my Molly folder which has all my GD videos and pictures is on 2 of the disks (so currently both of the disks in the pool) When I get around to adding another disk back to the pool, most likely another 2TB or 3TB -- but don't really have need for space at the moment and disk costs just go down and down, so why should I pay for space not really using, etc. Only reason I got the 3TB disk was it was 10$ more than the 2TB model.. Since at the time 2TB would of suited my needs just fine.

Which was the reason I asked - do you have requirements of 15TB of space currently? How much space to you currently need?

The software has a 30day trial - grab it and play around with it.. Put it on a VM and create some virtual disks to play around with putting them in and out of a pool, etc.

Tell you what - when I was having some issues with the 3TB disk, the support was just fantastic!! And they even created some betas to work around the problem in the scanner software of theirs to see the full size of the disk when windows was reporting it as 0 ;) Even though the partitions is there that is 3TB, etc..

Not sure what is up with that - but the disk works fine, just something odd with the 3TB disks and 4K sectors with RDM on esxi maybe, odd.. But since I know the scanner sees the filesystem and smart info I am not too worried about windows disk manager showing 0 or blank for the size.

[+longgonebn Subscriber²]

Wow, that's quite a bit of information.

Yes, I have requirements for 15TB, or at least very soon. My older system is running at full 8TBs, and it's growing.

 

So make it simple for me, I install DrivePool, and I can select my 5x 3TB drive and add that to one pool. So this will show up as a single 15TB drive within Windows Explorer? And I can manage and edit and organize as I would with any other drive, outside of DrivePool I mean?

[me.me.me]

  On 21/11/2013 at 00:12, bman said:

I just got 5 new WD

 

 

here's ur first error.

[+BudMan MVC]

"So this will show up as a single 15TB drive within Windows Explorer? And I can manage and edit and organize as I would with any other drive, outside of DrivePool I mean?"

Exactly!! All there is too it - not really a lot of info there, mostly pics.

You will want to move your file structure from your existing drives into the pool drive. But then sure after that you just work with whatever drive letter your pooldrive is just like any normal drive.

I would suggest if you buy it, at the same time buy the scanner -- this will keep an eye on the disks in your pool, and warn you of any issues, etc. Save $10 if you do, or drivepool is whole $20 - ###### had three after work beers the other day was more than that ;)

[+longgonebn Subscriber²]

OK, one last quesiton.

 

So I have this big 15TB drive, I organize how I want Movies folder, TV Folder etc....

 

But if you actually go into each drive, it's organized with differnet folders correct, created by DrivePool?

 

If that is the case, say one drive dies.....if I recover the data, put it onto a new drive, and re-add this drive to the pool, does the pool end up how it was, or is there an issue now?

[+BudMan MVC]

No its not organized with different folders, your folders are just under the pool folder.

So if one drive dies, you would look the data that was on that drive. So you would replace the drive and add it to the pool and then put the files that were lost back.

Why would you put the data onto a drive and then added it to the pool? But even if you did, that data would not listed as being in the pool until you moved it there.

My point about pool drives being able to be moved was say the computer died (MB or something, sata controller) Or you just say wanted to move your data to new faster computer or one with more sata ports, or something.

You pop your drives in to this new system does not matter if they are connected in the same order as before or on the same port numbers as old computer. Or even same type of controllers, with raid if your controller died you better replace it with the same exact one, etc. You install drivepool on this machine and it will see that these drives were all part of pool and put your drive pool back, etc.

This is a really simple concept here - not sure what is so confusing. What I suggest you do if your not grasping it, is play with it with your 5 drives before you move all your data over too it. Like I said there is a 30 day trail.

[+longgonebn Subscriber²]

The part that is confusing is, it's going to be a single drive, so I create 2 Folders, Movies, TV.

 

If one drive dies, you're saying that those two folders are on every drive, just has different media inside?

 

And I said to put the media back, because, well the drive died, I recovered the data, what else do I do it with, do I add the new drive to the pool first, then add the files, back....

 

The part I am not getting is how exactly it puts these drives together, and how losing one/data and recovering it works.

 

Anyway, I will play with it.

 

*now that I read your above post slower, I think I may understand a bit better lol

[+BudMan MVC]

"If one drive dies, you're saying that those two folders are on every drive, just has different media inside?"

Yes!!!

Look

That is my rdm1 and rdm3 -- see under the pool folder they have the same file structure and the actual drivepool drive.

The idea would not be loosing drives - which is why you should watch them with scanner. But yes in the event you lost a drive.. You would just look to see which movies are missing and "rerip" them from your originals <wink><wink>

Your home movies, ie that you have stored on more than 1 drive in the pool you would not have to rerip or replace from your DR backup, since will they are still on the pool on some other drive that did not die.

[+longgonebn Subscriber²]

That cleared up a lot of questions. I will be playing with it this weekend.

 

So now my question is though, you show two drives (same folder structure) and a long horrible PoolPart folder name.

 

This will probably be answered once I play with it, you show both these drives within Explorer, but isn't only one drive suppose to show up within Explorer (well in my case)? And only within the DrivePool app can I see each individual drive and its data?

 

This has been a long convo, so I am probably getting stuff mixed up, and will figure it out once I install it this weekend.

Thanks for the help.

[+BudMan MVC]

All the drives are in explorer.. Drivepool creates the the Pool drive.. I showed you this with screen shot of my computer.

[+longgonebn Subscriber²]

lol, ok now I get it. Not sure why that took me a bit.

 

Not exactly what I wanted, but still is quite awesome, still going to use it.

[+Warwagon MVC]

 

  On 21/11/2013 at 20:30, tester.br said:

here's ur first error.

 

What's wrong with WD ... if in fact he got WD Red Drives I heard Reds are the best for NAS's.

[+longgonebn Subscriber²]

I did research, and basically, all drive companies have a fairly high failure rate, so you can have 100% success with WD, someone else can have none.

 

So I am not too worried anymore.

[+BudMan MVC]

"Not exactly what I wanted, but still is quite awesome, still going to use it."

You do understand you could hide the other disks, or not even give them drive letters and add them to the pool.

Remember my G drive the rdm2 - backup drive that was not part of the pool. I removed letter, and can still add it to the pool. So if you don't give your drives letter, and only add them to the pool, then in my computer you would only see the pool drive.

I just have them with letters because I don't really use that machine on the console, its just my NAS.. Only access it via shares on the pool drive (media, molly, etc) normally, currently F is shared because I have some stuff on it that is not part of the pool.. Should prob clean that up ;)

Then I could remove those other drives from explorer - but like I said I don't really use that machine console other than to update it or install something or create a new share, etc. So having the multiple drives listed in explorer is a non issue for me.

[+longgonebn Subscriber²]

So, I don't suppose you use Plex Media Server?

 

As I have got that up and running, and having issues. It basically won't load information/images properly and fully. Asking on the Plex forums, but DrivePool is the only thing I did different this time around.

[+longgonebn Subscriber²]

  On 23/11/2013 at 11:29, BudMan said:

"Not exactly what I wanted, but still is quite awesome, still going to use it."

You do understand you could hide the other disks, or not even give them drive letters and add them to the pool.

Remember my G drive the rdm2 - backup drive that was not part of the pool. I removed letter, and can still add it to the pool. So if you don't give your drives letter, and only add them to the pool, then in my computer you would only see the pool drive.

addnondriveletterdisk.png

I just have them with letters because I don't really use that machine on the console, its just my NAS.. Only access it via shares on the pool drive (media, molly, etc) normally, currently F is shared because I have some stuff on it that is not part of the pool.. Should prob clean that up ;)

Then I could remove those other drives from explorer - but like I said I don't really use that machine console other than to update it or install something or create a new share, etc. So having the multiple drives listed in explorer is a non issue for me.

I am about to remove the drive letters from the drives. Is it ok to do this now that DrivePool is setup and files are being added?

[+BudMan MVC]

Yeah go ahead.. As to plex, no I don't use it - don't have the need. I have a popcorn hour A110 and just pull all my media directly off the pool drive share.

[Praetor]

how does this software compare to RAID, in terms of performance (software vs raid card)? just curious because the more i read about this technology the more i like it.

[+BudMan MVC]

Not sure what you want to compare to raid, its not a raid.

Its not slower if that is what your thinking.. I store my media files there, I move them back and forth from my workstation all the time, screams. I see 70 to 90MBps

here is test I just ran pulling a almost 600MB video from the share to my workstation

[riahc3]

Hello,

  On 21/11/2013 at 19:20, bman said:

OK, you got me. So your Drivepool you use, can this be used with Windows? I want to do the pool options with Windows 8.1....any tutorials, or do I just install? Also, what if I already have media on one of the drives?

 

Cause yes, this isn't critical data, it's media and can be replaced (though 3TBs worth is a pain to replace lol, but as you said, most of the time it can be recovered).

I was exactly in your shoes some time ago.

To what BudMan is talking about (and if you wanna get more info): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Storage_virtualization

Also, Windows 8 supports it natively (although DrivePool is better): http://windows.microsoft.com/en-in/windows-8/storage-spaces-pools

 

  On 21/11/2013 at 19:47, BudMan said:

Drivepool runs under 8.1 yes - and yes you can have media on the drive already. Adding it to the pool does not destroy anything on it. It won't be listed into the pool, until you move it there.

With drivepool - you can access it disk directly, or just use the drivepool letter to access it.

So here is my "nas" just running windows 7.. This is just a VM, with RDM maps to the drives, so the vm has direct access and can read smart info from the drives

So see rdm1 F and rdm3 E, those are the 2 drives currently in the pool H: rdm2 i the disk I pulled out of the pool See below that the screenshot of the control panel for the software.

Now you can directly access disk via say F

See the other folders and files on there other than the pool folder. Those are not going to be seen in the pool.. But I can still access the disk and access those files, etc.

What is neat - is you can put these disks into any other system and access files under normal folders and names, they are just under the pool folder. So if the machine dies that was running your pool you can just move disks to any other machine that can read ntfs and access your files normally. And if you install drivepool on this new machine it will see that these drives were in a pool and recreate your pool for you. Its pretty slick.. You can change the way the software spreads the files among the disk.. You can say try and keep all drives half full, or evenly distribute all files, or fill up the disks before you start using the other ones.

Where you have files/folders you want to hedge your bets against about loss - you can duplicate them to however many disks you want or have in your pool

So my Molly folder which has all my GD videos and pictures is on 2 of the disks (so currently both of the disks in the pool) When I get around to adding another disk back to the pool, most likely another 2TB or 3TB -- but don't really have need for space at the moment and disk costs just go down and down, so why should I pay for space not really using, etc. Only reason I got the 3TB disk was it was 10$ more than the 2TB model.. Since at the time 2TB would of suited my needs just fine.

Which was the reason I asked - do you have requirements of 15TB of space currently? How much space to you currently need?

The software has a 30day trial - grab it and play around with it.. Put it on a VM and create some virtual disks to play around with putting them in and out of a pool, etc.

Tell you what - when I was having some issues with the 3TB disk, the support was just fantastic!! And they even created some betas to work around the problem in the scanner software of theirs to see the full size of the disk when windows was reporting it as 0 ;) Even though the partitions is there that is 3TB, etc..

Not sure what is up with that - but the disk works fine, just something odd with the 3TB disks and 4K sectors with RDM on esxi maybe, odd.. But since I know the scanner sees the filesystem and smart info I am not too worried about windows disk manager showing 0 or blank for the size.

BudMan explained this informatio about what a month ago to me and STILL he rewrote it again.

I always use you as a example to why the Tech Issues Solved system is so flawed :p

 

  On 21/11/2013 at 19:52, bman said:

Wow, that's quite a bit of information.

Yes, I have requirements for 15TB, or at least very soon. My older system is running at full 8TBs, and it's growing.

 

So make it simple for me, I install DrivePool, and I can select my 5x 3TB drive and add that to one pool. So this will show up as a single 15TB drive within Windows Explorer? And I can manage and edit and organize as I would with any other drive, outside of DrivePool I mean?

Basically, yes.

Its a intresting (nonfree but your data is worth 10 bucks or whatever the price is) concept that I didnt even know existed that was brought to my attention.

Personally (and BudMan is going to kill me for this) I refer a nice dedicated NAS box where I can plug in my drives, select my RAID (my case 5) and viola, done. DrivePool does take a minute or two to get with the interface but once setup it looks like a breeze. Also, Im lazy as hell and I perfer RAID5ing EVERYTHING (even a picture of the logo of Mickey Mouse) because I find it so easy to replace a drive (even if there is a high risk of a second drive failing after one drive has failed in the RAID5)

Summary: Ignore everything Ive said and listen to BudMan.

Also, mark whatever post from him you want as Solved.

[Praetor]

  On 25/11/2013 at 14:39, riahc3 said:

snipped.

Summary: Ignore everything Ive said and listen to BudMan.

 

there, fixed. :D

 

DrivePool seem like Storage Spaces that Windows 8 and 8.1 have. Gonna try it soon to compare with Storage Spaces and a RAID card (RAID 10) i have. My concern is performance and reliability.

[riahc3]

Hello,

Here is a thread I made where BudMan (and .fahim) explains to me about Storage Pools/Space:

https://www.neowin.net/forum/topic/1180749-raid-levels-why-and-which-depending-on-situation-of-course/

A lot of info in there.

[+longgonebn Subscriber²]

  On 25/11/2013 at 12:15, BudMan said:

Yeah go ahead.. As to plex, no I don't use it - don't have the need. I have a popcorn hour A110 and just pull all my media directly off the pool drive share.

No worries, it is an issue on the Plex side :)

Thanks for all the help, this is quite awesome.

[Praetor]

  On 25/11/2013 at 15:12, BudMan said:

The point to take away from the article is traditional raid is dead or dieing.

 

that's my thoughts as well, i think RAID is great but wastes too many disks and requires an economic effort to have a resilient array.