Can I change the drive letter for the DrivePool?

ia1324 · April 2012

Hi everyone,

Upon initial installation, my pool drive letter was "G:". I shut down my machine, added another drive and booted up. Somehow it took the "G:" letter and the DrivePool changed to "H:". This cause a folder to disappear from the dashboard and another folder to be reported as missing.

My questions:

1. What's the best way to fix this?

2. To avoid this in the future, is there a way to change the drivel letter for the drive pool to "Z:" or something like that safely?

Thanks!

Imran

saitoh183 · April 2012

why dont u use mount points for your drives? Else just go into Windows Disk management and change the drive letter

ia1324 · April 2012

So I looked into Disk Management option and when I try to change the drive letter it said the drive was in use and if I was sure I wanted to change it. I did stop the StableBit DrivePool service before doing this. Still got that message.

Can you point to where I can learn more about using mount points for drives?

Thank you

saitoh183 · April 2012

That is normal that it ask the question. You can just say yes and it will change it. As for Mount-point you can look here :

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc938934.aspx and this article can be helpful http://www.windowsitpro.com/article/file-systems/the-magic-of-mount-points

Since my drives that are in my pool, have no other function except being used by DP, to not have tones of drives in my Computer view and still be able to access them individually, this was best option. I dont recommend using mount-point for external storage(USB, external drives) or with drives that are used for other task(unless you can direct that task to use your mount-point location instead of a drive letter)

saitoh183 · April 2012

Here is my setup

ia1324 · April 2012

Thank you. That was helpful. I was able to change the drive letters and things are functioning as expected. I looked into mount points and I can see why you chose to use them given the large number number of drives you have! Thanks for the screenshot. What kind of enclosure are you using for all those drives?

JazJon · April 2012

I've been waiting to change my drive pool driver letter until someone said how and that it's safe.

I'm currently drive M: but I'd rather have it drive S: (for StableBit) It will also be further away from conflicts as well.

What are all the steps to change the stablebit drive pool. You have to end a few services, but what about making sure WHS Folders don't flip out?

saitoh183 · April 2012

@JazJon

Since DP is very integrated with Disk Management, changing the letter via DM should function like if you where changing the letter of any other physical drive. Yes, it will give the message warning( just make sure no programs are open that could be accessing the your pool locally or network) but that is normal since the drive is always in a use state. No need to stop the DP service or anything like that (worst case, reboot after its done to see if the change stays)

@ia1234

I use a 4 bay mediasonic (non Raid version) Esata/USB2 with a SIL3124 esata card. as for the rest of my drives, they are connected to the motherboard (1 to the esata card internal sata port)

Shane · April 2012

If nothing is currently shared in the pool, you can simply use Disk Management to change the letter. It will warn about open files, so check you don't have anything open before proceeding. Afterwards, immediately reboot.

If your pool contains shares, it's a little more complicated. Let's assume your pool drive is K and you want to change it to P:

* use Dashboard to stop sharing any custom shares in K.

* use Explorer to move the contents of any default shares that you have in K (e.g. K:\ServerFolders\Documents) to temporary folders that you create which are also in K (e.g. K:\ServerFolders\Documents.old). Do not move the shared folder itself, move only its contents.

* EXCEPTION: the Client Computer Backups folder, if on K, should be moved WITH ITS CONTENTS to a drive other than K. Yes, this could take a while. (this might actually not be necessary - volunteers are welcome to try at their own risk).

* use Dashboard to move the default WHS shares to a drive other than K (e.g. to D). Since they're now empty, moving the shares will be quick.

* reboot, then use Disk Management to change the drive letter from K to P.

* use Dashboard to share your old custom shares again, now on P, and to move your default shares to P also.

* use Explorer to move the contents of the temporary folders you created earlier (e.g. P:\ServerFolders\Documents.old) back into their counterpart shared folders (e.g. P:\ServerFolders\Documents). Afterwards, you can delete the empty temporary folders.

That should be it.

Shane · April 2012

(edited 2012-04-24 re Client Computer Backups folder)

(edited 2012-06-21 to put the reboot before instead of after changing drive letter, apparently less chance of WHS leaving empty folders behind)

stsmith5150 · April 2012

@Shane

Move the contents? I have 4TB of movies...and dont have the room.

Shane · April 2012

@stsmith5150 Many file systems (Windows, DrivePool, etcetera) can perform a "move" operation two different ways: move-via-update and move-via-copy. The idea is that since we're using Explorer to move content directly from folder X to folder Y on the same drive - the pooldrive - DP will simply update the directory tables rather than copying the content to Y before deleting it from X.

Test it with a smallish directory: using Explorer (either via Remote Desktop or with a keyboard, mouse and monitor plugged into your WHS if you swing that way) open your pooldrive, e.g. K. Create a brand new folder "test1" on K and copy (not move) a couple gigs of files into it. Should take a little while. Now create a second brand new folder "test2" on K, and move (not copy) the files from "test1" to "test2". Should happen almost instantly.

btb66 · June 2012

I've got the drive letters a little messed up and will follow this guide to put the pool onto Z to get it right out of the way.

Once I've stopped sharing all my custom shares, can I also swap the drive letters around as well as the pool letter? Somehow one disk has become 'D' , which really should be the second partition on the system disk, and that has become 'H'. I'd like to get these back to a normal situatuion.

Will this cause any extra problems, and can I switch these around and still find my custom shares once I've rebooted with the 'new' pool letter?

Shane · July 2012

Sorry for the late reply btb66, I've been away. You should be able to switch them back to what they're supposed to be; if not, you can just switch them back again.

btb66 · July 2012

Thank you. I'm not usually so slow to try things out and see what happens, just with WHS and DP for some reason.

It was straightforward, switched those drive letters, rebooted and the dashboard showed 'client computer backups' were missing, though an option was there to 'recreate the missing folder'. Did that and everything as it should be, with the second partition of the OS HDD now on 'D' .

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Can I change the drive letter for the DrivePool?

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