Multple Pool Part directories on two of my drives

RonV42

I was doing some server cleanup over the holidays and I noticed that two of my five drives have 2 pool part directories.  On each of those drives one of the poolpart directories has it's attribute hidden and the other doesn't have any attributes set.  Also the one that doesn't have the hidden bit set has the date from may where the hidden directory has a date from about 3 days ago.

How do I know if the older poolpart is actually part of the pool?  I know this shouldn't happen but I think back when I did the trial I uninstalled and then re-installed which may have left these older directories out there.

Is there a way of identifying if these older poolpart directories are part of the pool?

 

Thanks.

Shane

Hi, you could try copying a different file into each of the poolpart folders and refreshing to see if either (or both!) appears in the pool, but I've asked Alex if there's a better way.

RonV42

Ok...I think I will wait till you hear back from Alex...I don't want to play with the file system. :-)

 

Alex

Ron,

I think I can answer that.

As you may know, DrivePool stores your pooled files in their original NTFS format inside the hidden "PoolPart..." folders on each disk that is part of the pool.

When you remove a drive from the pool, DrivePool will migrate all the files in the hidden "PoolPart..." folder on that drive back onto the pool.

There are certain cases where DrivePool will leave behind the original "PoolPart..." folder on the drive without deleting it (and some files in it). We've tried to minimize these occurrences as DrivePool matured. For example, in earlier versions, one reason why DrivePool would leave behind a "PoolPart..." folder was because a file that was on the disk being removed was in use by an application running on the server.

From the beginning, DrivePool was designed to be very careful about deleting any files automatically. We have triple redundant code when it come to deleting files. If there was any reason at all to believe that the file was still needed, we would leave it behind.

We would simply mark the "PoolPart..." folder with a special "tag" that tells DrivePool to ignore it, and remove the hidden attribute. We use NTFS alternate streams for, what we call, "tags". They can be seen from the command prompt by issuing a dir /r.

The latest builds of DrivePool support the Microsoft restart manager API, and so we are able to tell which files are in use by what applications and handle those appropriately in order to minimize left behind files.

Let me know if you need any more info (PM me to get my attention).