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Thank you,


Have I made a mistake?

RobRob
edited March 2012 in DrivePool
Hi,

I finally installed DP yesterday after coming back to it after early M3.

Either I did something wrong, but when I added the disk (all containing data), I was unable to access them through a shared DP folder. DP shows that there is data on the drives, but it is not vissible under the "overview" tab.

Then I copied one large file to the share to test and that showed up correctly.

So my conclusion was that I had to copy all data (23 TB) to the share and let DP redistribute. Question 1: Is this really the only way?

Dreading at the outlook of copying data for days, I had a look at the drives and noticed that when I move the ServerFolders (containing the old shared folder) folder to the Poolpart folder, DP picks up the data, without copying. Question 2: Is this save or OK? I mean does DP index/ reckognize/ duplicate/ whatever it needs to do correctly or did I screw things up now?

I have another build waiting with roughly the same amount of data. What is the best practice to install DP and have all data available in the quickest and best way? Both servers consist of 17 drives each with one shared folder on each disk (eg. Movies 01, TV series 05, etc...).

Thanks for your help.

Rob
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Comments

  • datageekdatageek
    Member
    This is not supported (unless Stablebit can confirm otherwise) as it bypasses the "correct" way of getting data onto the pool, but in principle it should work as DrivePool does not separately store any state about the contents of each folder.

    I've tried it before (with much smaller data volumes) and others have as well (see this post). You might need to fix the permissions afterwards. I would also suggest having duplication switched off, and turn it on afterwards if required.
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  • RobRob
    Member
    I was afraid of this. So basically I have to go the "hard way" and copy all files to the DP share and let DP do it's thing. The same as WHS v1?

    Maybe Stablebit can introduce a wizard that does a simple move as I (and others, thanks for the link datageek) did manually, but than compliant to DP rules? Would save enormous amount of time.
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  • ShaneShane
    Resident Guru
    Can you clarify for us the steps you took to add your old disks/data to your new DrivePool install?
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  • ShaneShane
    Resident Guru
    (because while not officially supported, it IS possible to move rather than copy old data into the pool, via accessing the hidden poolpart folders on the corresponding physical drives).
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  • RobRob
    Member
    OK, will try to be as precise as possible.

    Old situation was 17 drives, with on each drive a shared folder, containg the data. So disk 1 contained shared folder Movie 01, within the folder the movies.

    Now I installed DP.

    Added the first 2 disks, normally (add drive to pool). Did not stop sharing rhe folder shares on the old disks.

    DP showed that there was data on the disks under drives tab, on the overview tab the pool size was zero.

    I went into the disk itself and noticed that the shared folder Movie 01 was present in the folder ServerFolders.

    I simply dragged the ServerFolders folder to the poolpart folder and presto after a reboot, my pool size was now almost 3 TB.

    Now I made a folder share for DP.

    Data was visible and accessible directly on the WHS box, but not via SMB.

    Changed guest permissions and now it all seems to work.


    Hope this helps?!?!

    I m just afraid that in th future, maybe DP does not know what to do with my files. Maybe incorrectly indicates duplication errors, etc...

    But then again, since there is no need to move the data from one disk to the other, it would be great if there is an option to migrate data to the pool, wihout phisically moving them.
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  • ShaneShane
    edited March 2012 Resident Guru
    Pretty much what you have outlined above is the manual method to move (rather than move-via-copy) your files into the pool, and it's usually permissions that trips things up, as you discovered. A migration tool would be nice, yes.

    Adding a disk to the pool, as you also discovered, does not automatically add its contents to the pool; that has to be done separately. This is by design (in case you want to have a disk containing pooled and non-pooled data).

    If you're worried about duplication consistency, there's a button in the Pool tab to force a consistency check.
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  • ShaneShane
    edited March 2012 Resident Guru
    One thing I would do differently is in the case of any default WHS shares (e.g. Documents, Pictures); don't drag these manually, always use the Dashboard's "Move the folder" tool for these shares (it might not be necessary, but better safe than sorry).

    If the default WHS shares contain a large amount of data, and you don't want to move-via-copy the data, you could temporarily move the data into other folders on the same drive before moving the folder to the pool using the dashboard tool, and then move the data "back" afterwards yourself.
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