making room to remove drive from pool

skyva

Hi, I have whs2011 and 4x2tb drives in a drive pool, used only to back up several pc's.  That is, the drive pool is fed data from whs2011 backing up all the hard drives of my other pc's.  I only have 1.5tb free space left distributed across the 4 drives. I would like to remove one of the 2tb drives and replace it with a 3tb drive to increase space.  The problem is that the I have no more free sata ports so can't just add another drive without removing one, and not enough free space to clear one drive without adding more storage.  I do have 2 non pooled drives, being C (OS) and D (non-pooled data from C)

Could I remove a non pooled drive (lets say D), install the new 3tb to its sata port (NewD), add it to the pool, remove all data from one of the 2tb drives (Z:) and swap to NewD, then pull the now empty 2tb drive (Z:), and put the 3tb (NewD) in its port?  Or is there a better way.  Maybe if I delete the duplicated data in whs2011, although not super confident of that as it is all auto backup stuff, so not sure if better to delete it off the normal PC's so it gets removed, or try to remove it physically from the back up files themselves.

 

Any help appreciated.  Overall it is a great product.

andersa

I'd just disable duplication while removing the drive. Given that you only use whs2011 for PC backups, you have the data stored 3 times with duplication on and still twice with duplication off.

skyva

Sorry, should clarify, the duplication is not part of back up, it is data that occurs on several pc's that is duplicated in backup.  For example, I might have 50 photos and videos on my laptop, and the same files on my home pc.  When backed up these are duplicated in the drivepool.

 

I have no folders duplciated under drivepool.

Shane

In a standard WHS2011 install, the first disk is partitioned into C and D drives - so if you have a standard install, you can't physically remove D from the machine without also removing your C drive.

Is your install non-standard, i.e. your D drive on a separate physical disk from your C drive?

skyva

Yes, non-std install.  I use a ssd for C and have a 500gb drive for D, as D is where I store all my downloads and other, non-backup data.  I then have 4 additional HDD for the pool. Another option is to replace the 500gb D drive with a 3tb drive partitioned into D (1gb) and E (2gb) where E is added to the pool.  However, having the drive partitioned into part pool, part non-pool makes me nervous.  D is sometimes used for torrents so it can be worked a little, and I am trying to keep the pool drives separate from the drive that is worked hard.

 

Shane

Yes, in that case I think you could indeed:

1. pull the 500GB non-pool disk
2. use the freed port for the new 3TB disk and add that to the pool
3. remove one of the old 2TB disks from the pool
4. pull the now empty old 2TB disk
5. plug the 500GB disk back in (swap ports with the 3TB if desired)
6. make sure the 500GB disk gets its original drive letter back

Shutting down and rebooting as necessary, of course.

skyva

Thanks, will give that a go.