Removing missing drives

speedownsie

When uninstalling drivepool, it does not properly remove itself. This is confirmed when trying to reinstall the latest version, it shows missing drives from the previous drive pool. In my mind uninstalling an application removes all traces of it.

Of course i can remove the missing drives individually, but only provided i've got another drive available in the pool.

I accept there are reasons for this. I'd like to see a 'reset to default' option, where all missing drives are removed and any HD drives present are treated as unpooled, as if they had come from another drive pool.

saitoh183

That would be a nice thing...maybe in M4. For now i followed the Clean Reinstall and for putting the pool back to default, as you say, you can just delete the "ServerPoolPart.{GUID}" located in the root of the drive you want to remove (hidden folder). Just be aware that if you do that you will lose any data the pool had stored on that drive. I think the may reason that DP doesnt do a unistall like you want is because your data is still in those hidden folders and C:\ServerPool. If PD unistalls properly those should be the only remnants of DP left on the system...which are the most important.

Alex

DrivePool does not remove the metadata that describes your pool when you remove the add-in. It's essentially the same as a program keeping its user settings after an uninstall so that when you reinstall it, your settings are preserved.

For DrivePool this means that any "Missing" drives will still be remembered across re-installs. Disks will not be marked as foreign across re-installs. And any read / write error information will be preserved.

None of this info is mandatory for pool functionality, but I think it makes sense.

Anyone disagree, would you rather see everything wiped out when removing the add-in, including the metadata?

Shane

Perhaps a checkbox, "Remove EVERYTHING including DrivePool history and metadata (pool content will not be touched)? Use this if you have no intention of reinstalling, or need a completely clean reinstall."

Alex

The problem is, I don't think that you can modify the WHS uninstaller to include a check box.

Shane

Hmm. Could you have the uninstaller remove everything unless it is being called by a same-or-newer version's installer (this'd depend on how installer software deals with an existing install)? That way, upgrading DrivePool won't wipe history/metadata, while manual uninstalls will.

Alex

Yeah, that's possible. There is a distinction between an update uninstall or a full uninstall.

However, I'm still not sold on wiping out the metadata without asking the user. It's only a few small files and it seems like other programs leave their settings who knows where in the registry all the time.

Shane

Checkbox or button in DP's advanced options to flush the metadata upon uninstall or immediately, respectively?

Alex

So what are we really solving by wiping out the metadata?

As far as I can tell, we need it for those situations where DrivePool stops working for some reason or other and the user wants a "clean" reinstall.

Perhaps we need to offer a "clean re-install version" that will wipe out the metadata upon installing?

I don't know. I don't see a good solution to this.

Enigma

Why not offer a separate 'removal tool'? I remember the days when I used Norton software: Symantec had such a download on their website to remove all traces of an install.

Prelector

Why not offer a separate 'removal tool'? I remember the days when I used Norton software: Symantec had such a download on their website to remove all traces of an install.

Seems like the perfect option.  It's not something that would be regularly used, so a seperate tool for that one-off situation sounds perfect.

Degauth

Problem I've encountered - I had Drivepool installed previously, I removed it, then deleted all the left behind files. I have now added it again, and it says my drives are in a pool and are "missing" , but I can't remove them because there isn't enough free space to remove them (Pool size shows 0 bytes). Obviously I can't add them again because it thinks they are part of this pool still. This is a perfect example of why you would want Drivepool to cleanly uninstall itself.