Repeated Standard Shares since moving to the pool

ethanol

When I look at the standard "Server Folders and Hard Drives" Tab in the dashboard, I get repetition of some of the standard folders e.g. :

Music (w/ icon of music), Description blank, Location Blank, Free Space - Unknown, Status - Missing

MUSIC, Descritption blank, Location C:\ServerPool\ServerFolders\MUSIC.1

Pictires (w/ icon of photo), Description blank, Location Blank, Free Space - Unknown, Status - Missing

PICTURES, Descritption blank, Location C:\ServerPool\ServerFolders\PICTURES.1

Recorded TV (w/ icon of TV ), Description blank, Location Blank, Free Space - Unknown, Status - Missing

RECORDED TV, Descritption blank, Location C:\ServerPool\ServerFolders\Recorded.TV.1

ie the pool ones show up with their correct location but the standard ones are showing as missing.

 

When looking in the Drivepool Tab, I only get the ones which exist and are in the Pool

Any ideas?

 

Alex

Yes.

DrivePool has had an issue preserving case across folder names for a while. It should be fixed in build 3262+.

Unfortunately, this bug has affected default share migration. You see, apparently WHS recognizes default shares by their name, and it's case sensitive! So MUSIC is not the same as Music. As soon as the Music folder's name was changed to MUSIC, WHS would not recognize it as a default folder and so it would mark it as missing. At the same time, the MUSIC folder, now not a default folder, would exist perfectly fine on the pool.

This was recognized and addressed in build 3057+. Build 3057 makes sure that the default shares on the pool are cased correctly and if they're not it fixes them for you and informs WHS at service startup.

So the end result should be that, in the latest build, those Missing folders will be found as folders on the pool and you should end up with one Music, Pictures and Recorded TV folder. 

ethanol

Alex,

 

I'm now on the latest build (3294) and Windows is still reporting the default shares as "missing" with the capitalised ones on the pool still there.

 

DO I need to rename to "Music2" and back again or should your updates manage it already?

lee1978

Hi

I sorted mine by renaming them only takes a few seconds to do and works I think from a clean install we will not have these problems the problems we have come from upgrading from m2 to m3 which does things a different way but to be fair these are minor problems and Alex and Co are doing a mighty fine job fixing the bugs as we find them at least they don't tell us to unplug the computer for 30 sec like Microsoft lol

Lee

ethanol

Agree- fine job - not complaining just checking whether still "bug" or expected.

I started w/ M3 (but an older build).

Alex

So just to be exact about this issue, let me explain what the problem is and hopefully you will understand what DrivePool does to fix it.

Problem:

We've had this long running issue where DrivePool would sometimes upper case the entire folder name on the pool. It was not easy to fix because that upper case name was coming from Windows, and we essentially had to proof it and correct it before accepting it. The problem didn't cause any damage to your file data, it just changed the case on some of you directories. And as you know, Windows file / directory names are really case insensitive and so everything kept working just fine, that is until M3 came out.

One unforeseen side effect of this renaming problem cropped up with default folders. WHS recognizes default folders by their shared name and it's CASE SENSITIVE. So Music is a default folder and MUSIC is not.

So as long as the shared folder on the pool was called Music everything was fine. But as soon as Music changed to MUSIC it became a non-default share as far as WHS was concerned. The practical implication of this is you having your music share on the pool and WHS reporting that the default Music share is missing.

Solution:

First of all, this folder casing issue needed to be fixed, and it was. Folders should not be spontaneously changing case on current versions of DrivePool.

But what about repairing the default shares?

In build 3057+ when DrivePool starts up is scans your pool for any root folder names that should be default shares. We can do this because our folder naming scheme is consistent with the share name. So the Music share would be stored in the MUSIC.1 or MUSIC.2 folder. As soon as it finds a folder that was a default share but was broken because of a case mismatch, it fixes it by renaming it to the proper casing.

The Catch:

What happens if you saw the missing default folder message from WHS and re-created the default share before DrivePool had a chance to fix it automatically?

You may now have 2 music shares. One called Music, stored on a single drive and perhaps Music (1) stored on the pool.

The reason for Music getting renamed to Music (1) on the pool is because of another DrivePool function called folder reconciliation. Basically, DrivePool will rename any folder names that are the same as any existing shares on the system.

Since this is a bit confusing I've created a little video of how to get out of this situation:

http://screencast.com/t/aHniIAnhgWtE