Question about results of a deletion test

dsteinschneider

I am testing a bunch of scenarios with DrivePool, the following one surprised me:

1. On workstation delete file in folder on duplicated share in Pool
2. Realtime duplication is on so as predicted file is gone from folders on the two drives its been placed into a poolpart subfolder
3. Go onto server and fire up Active@ UNDELETE
4. Scan either poolpart folder where file was - shows as 0 bytes - normally would be entire WTV file that's 6G
5. Try restoring anyway and file is indeed 0 bytes.

As many will point out folder duplication is not backup but I'm curious why after DrivePool deletes the underlying files the file recovery software sees them as 0 bytes. I've used Active@UNDELETE on folders on this machine after a deletion over the network from a workstation and after it scanned it displayed the file and recovered it without issue.

Thanks,

Alex

From a low level file system perspective, DrivePool just forwards the delete call to both NTFS pool parts. It's not modified in any way.

dsteinschneider

I figured that - the undelete tool should see two deleted files. Now that you've confirmed that I'll try it again.

I know if you schedule duplication the copy isn't made until the duplication scheduled time. How about if you delete a file in a share in the pool that has scheduled duplication - will its copy stay until duplication time?

Thanks

Alex

If a file is duplicated, all changes to that file are applied in real-time, to both file parts, regardless of the duplication settings. This includes deleting it.

Duplicating later is only for new files placed in duplicated folders. For example, if you're copying a lot of new files into a duplicated folder, it may copy faster with duplicate later enabled. Generally, you would always want to use real-time duplication because it's more reliable.