Taking the plunge! Question on duplication

dvdluvver

Good afternoon fellow WHS'ers!

I started helping the testing process with DrivePool back in the summer when the build numbers were in the mid hundreds.  Then the school year started, and I just couldn't keep up!  (I'm a teacher...)  It's been fun to watch the amazing progress Alex has made and the great support of this community.

So, I'm on Mid-Winter break, and noticing that my WHSv1 (the machine I've been using as backup to my WHS2011) is completely falling apart.   In analyzing my setup, I've concluded that in order to practically move forward I need to take the plunge with DrivePool on my WHS2011 machine.   It seems that things are stable enough at this point to move in.

I'm taking the process ONE step at a time.  I've created a pool with the two drives with the most space (a couple of TB) and beginning with my smallest directories (drivers, etc.).   I've moved my first folder over successfully, and went in to turn on duplication.   I noticed that it says that duplication happens "in the background".   So, I assumed that if I switched on duplication for a folder, I could immediately proceed to move a new folder into the pool (since duplication is supposed to be in the background).  Not so, it seems, as I am met with "another task in progress" when attempting this.   Is this by design, or perhaps a bug?

Seems like RC must be close!

Ron

Paaland

I always turn on duplication before staring to fill the share. That way it's duplicated in real-time and I don't have to wait for the duplication run afterwards.

The duplication is running in the background. I.e. the server and your files are still available even when duplication occurs. I've never gone the way you've done, but it might be that Alex/DP does not permit you to alter the pool when a duplication run is in progress.

My advice. Turn on duplication before copying the files next time.

dvdluvver

Hi again!     My server is already filled (with several TB of stuff), so what I'm doing is actually moving the folders from non pooled to pooled using the "Move Folder" wizard (which I thought I read somewhere that at this point that was the way it was to be done).  It works fine, though the migration takes time - several hours for 250GB.   I don't see a way to set duplication before moving the folder over.  (My backup is, unfortunately, not reliable at this point, so copying from there back to a duplicated folder is not going to work).

Is there another/better way to get the results I want? (all existing folders/shares except client backups on the pool and duplicated)

Thanks!

Ron

daveyboy37

Only an opinion, but depending on the amount of data, it may be worthwhile only choosing duplication when all your data is mapped out in a way u like. For ease of moving data into the pool there is a much quicker option. Though it will come at the expense of the data being balanced equally between drives.

Here goes.

 Create ALL required shared folders via the add-in. By all means, set options such as duplication and folder sharing permissions. This will create the serverpoolpart folder(You must make sure u are showing hidden files and folders)...Within the serverpoolpart folder, will be the ServerFolders folder. Inside here are the folders that you created, but if they are not there you can manually create them.(ensuring u name them exactly as you did when u created them in the add-in). From there it really is as simple as moving(not copy) the data  from outside the pool to within the created folders. If you move data from outside of the pool to inside but on the same physical disk it works instantly. However using this method i really would recommend not setting duplication until you have moved all your data into the respective folders. Then simply enable duplication for all required folders and let the data duplicate in the background. Your mileage may vary with this method, but when i first setup DrivePool this is the method i used, with 7TB of data over 10 physical discs. It worked flawlessly for me.Everything now duplicated :-)

 

 

dvdluvver

This worked great!  Thanks!  I knew there had to be a way!  Except..    (and this is my own doing).  I'd forgotten that when I first set this up, I'd created a couple of "spanned" drives (for my movie/tv rips).   Have to copy those over before breaking up the spans, since you can't read files on individual disks from these spans.   Good thing I've got extra HD's!

daveyboy37

Really glad it worked for you.. Rumours abound that Alex is gonna re enable a drive balancing option in a future biuld.. So if this is imporatant to you, you should be covered :-)

dvdluvver

Oh, good.  Something to enable my obsessive compulsive instincts.