Drive pooling

[Guest asrequested]

I figured I'd start a new thread for those who use and are thinking of using drive pooling

 

I'm using Stablebit with two pools, and SSD optimizer on the larger drive pool. I'm thinking of adding a drive pool on another machine, for backing up.

Edited March 1, 2017 by Doofus

[mediacowboy 438]

I use Drive Bender which is very similar to Stablebit.

 

I currently have one server setup using it for primary media access. It includes four 4tb Seagate desktop hard drives and two 8tb Seagate archive drives.

 

Once I get my new server built I will create a pool on it using Seagate 8tb Ironwolf drives. Then replace all the 4tb drives in with 8tb archive drives to have a backup and if need arises put emby back on it.

[CBers 7114]

Not thinking, already do

 

Been using DriveBender since the very early days (2011).

 

I have also installed DriveBender on family and friend's servers.

 

I'll be using it on my new server as well

[Guest asrequested]

I'm about to order another 5 drive hot swap cage, and an LSI SAS card, in prep for the back up drives, which I'll pool.

[ebr 15667]

I use FlexRaid - pretty much for the pooling feature.

[Swynol 375]

I use stablebit. One big pool. 9 x 3Tb sas drives. 1x 3Tb Sata, 2x 2tb sata, 1x 1tb sata and a few ransoms for backups. Might look at a ssd for optimiser. Does it matter what size it is? I have a few smaller 32 and 64gb ssds.

 

 

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

[Guest asrequested]

I use stablebit. One big pool. 9 x 3Tb sas drives. 1x 3Tb Sata, 2x 2tb sata, 1x 1tb sata and a few ransoms for backups. Might look at a ssd for optimiser. Does it matter what size it is? I have a few smaller 32 and 64gb ssds.

 

 

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

They just need to be big enough to handle what you throw at them. The whole files are written there, first. Then moved to the pool.

[Guest asrequested]

I use FlexRaid - pretty much for the pooling feature.

So it's not primarily designed for pooling?

[ebr 15667]

So it's not primarily designed for pooling?

 

It is primarily designed as software RAID but has very flexible pooling as well.

[Guest asrequested]

It is primarily designed as software RAID but has very flexible pooling as well.

Interesting. Does it let you put a pool in RAID? I would imagine that's a lot of processing.

[PenkethBoy 2066]

I use stablebit. One big pool. 9 x 3Tb sas drives. 1x 3Tb Sata, 2x 2tb sata, 1x 1tb sata and a few ransoms for backups. Might look at a ssd for optimiser. Does it matter what size it is? I have a few smaller 32 and 64gb ssds.

 

 

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

if they fill up the copying to the pool falls back to the archive drives (mostly - occasional hiccups)

 

Two Drivepool Drives on my main server across 33 drives(22 and 11) and a test pool on my main pc of just two drives

 

Also use their scanner software for drive health checking - although its a bit sluggish with lots of drives it still works

 

@@Swynol if you have the sata ports free use them all as DP will use all the ssd for cache (if you tell it they are ssd's) and use them in alternating pairs if you do a large data copy

[mediacowboy 438]

@@CBers, I noticed last night, I forget what version I am on, that I have several TB's of non pooled space in Drive bender. Is this because DB did not format the drives?

 

I have tried searching the forums on DB and I will gladdly copy it over to that forum but I wanted to check on here as I believe there may be more people running DB then what is showing.

[Happy2Play 9444]

@@CBers, I noticed last night, I forget what version I am on, that I have several TB's of non pooled space in Drive bender. Is this because DB did not format the drives?

 

I have tried searching the forums on DB and I will gladdly copy it over to that forum but I wanted to check on here as I believe there may be more people running DB then what is showing.

 

Is this free space or used space?

[CBers 7114]

@@CBers, I noticed last night, I forget what version I am on, that I have several TB's of non pooled space in Drive bender. Is this because DB did not format the drives?

 

I have tried searching the forums on DB and I will gladdly copy it over to that forum but I wanted to check on here as I believe there may be more people running DB then what is showing.

Do you mean additional drives, or space on drives?

[mediacowboy 438]

Sorry for the not so great picture. I'm at work and remoted into the server off my phone.

 

 

See how it shows 1.14 TB non pool used. I would expect that to be zero as I have given DB 100% of my drives for pooling purposes.

[CBers 7114]

Sorry for the not so great picture. I'm at work and remoted into the server off my phone.

 

 

See how it shows 1.14 TB non pool used. I would expect that to be zero as I have given DB 100% of my drives for pooling purposes.

Strange. What version you running, v2.4??

 

If so, upgrade to v2.5 and see if that makes a difference, but if not, I'd raise a support call.

[Guest asrequested]

Could that be some kind of partition?

[mediacowboy 438]

Strange. What version you running, v2.4??

 

If so, upgrade to v2.5 and see if that makes a difference, but if not, I'd raise a support call.

Maybe that is my issue I am still on 2.3.8.0.

[CBers 7114]

Maybe that is my issue I am still on 2.3.8.0.

It won't hurt to update

[PVTD 37]

Aaaah I did not see this topic, thx @

I have something weird, my drivepool just wont start, could it be that one of my drives is faulty?

It's not the final build for that pool, I was only building the server and randomly copying files over to see performance. But now I can't boot the pool up, it just freezes entirely, even StableBit says there are some errors, but nothing critical. Most likely a chkdsk would fix those errors up.

It would be pretty strange that if  a disk fails, the entire pool won't boot...

[Guest asrequested]

Are the drives OK in drive manager? Maybe a controller issue?

[PenkethBoy 2066]

usually a faulty drive or missing one does not stop DP from starting - i lost (loose sata cable) a ssd the other day and DP reported it missing - which sets the pool to Read only

 

 

drivers might be an issue - when i was trying to use Highpoint Rocket Raid cards - i had a good month of weird errors and lockups - which occurred at the same time i started using dp

 

 

What controller are you using?

[PenkethBoy 2066]

Sorry for the not so great picture. I'm at work and remoted into the server off my phone.

 

 

See how it shows 1.14 TB non pool used. I would expect that to be zero as I have given DB 100% of my drives for pooling purposes.

Just a wild speculation but could it be things like System Volume Information or Recycle bin or similar?

 

Just a guess as have never tried DB

[Happy2Play 9444]

Sorry for the not so great picture. I'm at work and remoted into the server off my phone.

 

 

See how it shows 1.14 TB non pool used. I would expect that to be zero as I have given DB 100% of my drives for pooling purposes.

 

Since DB and DP are similar, do you have content physically on your drives that is not within the pool?  In DrivePool it is called "Other" all content outside the pool.

 

I know its isn't supported in DrivePool but not sure about Drive Bender, do you have "Shadow Copies" enable on each drive, this would fill up space outside the pool on each drive (hidden System info)?

Edited March 1, 2017 by Happy2Play

[mediacowboy 438]

So after doing the update remotely. [emoji16]

 

I uninstalled DB and rebooted. Reinstalled DB and rebooted. System came back up and no drive with all my storage. Followed the registry fix on the knowledge base articles and rebooted. Drive appeared but showed the same 1.14 TB issue. Lose power at work and had to leave and get everything back up and running. Came back and only had about 5 GB showing the used non pool storage. Yay.

 

@@CBers, I am now running 2.5.0 on my current system with no issues yet. Will watch media tonight.