Verifying what happens when a drive is removed from the pool (v2.0.0.202)....

Comments

• montejw360

  March 2013 edited March 2013 Member

  "It looks like when the drive is removed the poolpart folder is marked visible and no files are deleted from the drive."
  
  well now i'm thinking it doesn't work that way.  I just removed a drive that had lots of files on it, now it only had 10 files in the poolpart folder.
  
  did something go wrong here?  are the files gone, or moved to other drives?
  
  unfortunately i don't remember just how many files were there, but it was a large number.  it took almost 24 hours to "remove" the drive from the pool.
  

  Share on Twitter
• montejw360

  March 2013 Member

  running a file recovery program on the drive, 1.8TB of deleted files, hoping to recover them.
  
  did the drive have a problem, or did dp delete them?
  

  Share on Twitter
• Shane

  March 2013 edited March 2013 Resident Guru

  I can't say what the intended behaviour of v2.0.0.202 is, but from my own brief tests, whether it removes pool content from a pooled drive being removed and/or makes that drive's poolpart visible seems to depend on a combination of (1) whether the content is duplicated, (2) whether the drive being removed is the last in the pool, (3) whether other processes have locks on files in the pool, e.g. if a file is opened for reading by the OS or another app.

  
  

  Regardless of version, DP should not touch content outside of the pool.

  Share on Twitter
• montejw360

  March 2013 Member

  there wasn't anything on the drive outside the pool, but in this case it seems to have deleted all but 10 files out of 1.8TB worth of files.  would be good to know the intended behavior is.  it seems like it would be good behavior to just check and verify duplication if enabled, check and verify that there are copies of all the files in the pool that are on that drive only, and mark the poolpart folder visible and don't touch the files on the drive.  that's what i thought it would do.
  
  if i'd known it was going to delete the files from the folder i'd have made another copy.  granted i should have a copy within the pool right now, but i would like to have verified that myself.  guess i could have before removing the drive, but i didn't.
  
  i'll probably recover all the files i can, verify them against the pool, then delete them again. 
  
  
  

  Share on Twitter
• CyberSimian

  March 2013 Member

  there wasn't anything on the drive outside the pool, but in this case it seems to have deleted all but 10 files out of 1.8TB worth of files.
  

  
  
  I am not yet using DrivePool (I am waiting to see if version 2 will "come good"), but the behaviour that you have described is exactly how I would expect DrivePool to work.
  

  When you use the DrivePool Control Panel to remove a drive from the pool, you are telling DrivePool to "remove all drivepool-ness from the drive", which would include deleting all files in the pool on that drive (after copying them to other drives in the pool), removing all DrivePool folders, and removing any other control information that it may be keeping on that drive.

  If DrivePool does not do this, then you are requiring the end user to have knowledge of what DrivePool has done to the drive so that the end user can undo it when he wants to use the drive for some other purpose.

  -- from CyberSimian in the UK

  Share on Twitter
• JazJon

  April 2013 Member

  I asked Alex the same thing.

  
  

  My question:
  "I've been meaning to ask this for awhile now.   After you remove a disk via drivepool, Is it normal to have left over files?   I just removed one of my 3TB drives for RMA and I see 66gb of data.   I'm confident these files are NOT missing from the pool and are a 3rd copy at this point.    I'm just curious if this is by design or anything you can enhance in the future to avoid confusion or confidence levels post removal.   I've seen left over files in every drive I've removed in the past, but each time they were verified to be 3rd copies. (no problems)"

  
  

  Response:
  "Yes, all those files should still be on the pool. We've had this happen before, I'll try to reproduce this and see what the issue is.

  
  

  In the past, it used to leave files behind if there was any kind of difference between the file on the pool and the file being removed. That way, it would not delete a file that may have changed since the removal was started.

  
  

  This is to make absolutely sure that you don't loose any data.

  
  

  But we now put the pool in read-only mode until removal completes, so this should not be happening any more. Perhaps some of the time stamps are still changing while removal is taking place, I'll take a look at this and try to get it not to leave behind files."

  Share on Twitter