Mirrored Multi-Disc Dynamic Volumes: Real-World Usability ?

Spent the last 2 weeks getting a Window 7/Drive Bender box up, running,
and loaded as my NAS backup.

Went to purchase DriveBender and the site flipped me to a page
announcing it's discontinuation - with no option to purchase.

Oh well...

Maybe I'll figure out a workaround and stick with DB... Maybe not.

From what I have read so far, it seems like it is technically feasible
to create two mirrored multi-disc volumes under Windows 7 Pro.

I am not looking for step-by-step handholding/instructions... just
opinions as to whether Windows Mirrored Multi-Disk Volumes are practical
in The Real World.

i.e.

- Once the array is created/loaded and a disk fails, is the effort
required to replace the failed disk within reason for, say, 10 TB\
of data and 6 disks in each array ?

- Assuming that failed disk replacement is reasonable, is there a
strategy for identifying physical disks ? i.e. we have a stack
of 12 disks... one fails.... how do we zero in on the failed disk ?

- How well does it tolerate different-sized disks ? Seems obvious
that it does tolerate different sizes... but how about the extremes
like a mixture of 1 TB and 6 TB disks ?

- Is there any way to check to ensure that both mirrors are
up-to-date and identical ?
--
Pete Cresswell

On 2015-11-22 10:00, (PeteCresswell) wrote:

Went to purchase DriveBender and the site flipped me to a page
announcing it's discontinuation - with no option to purchase.

Can you believe this? I don't have DriveBender but learned of it from
here, and immediately I wanted it (Landing Zone, Duplication by Folder,
drives readable with the pool offline, are you kidding me?! I'm
drooling). And now with your post I've just learned that what looks to
be the main programmer is leaving :-(

So I went to the DB Forums, seems they are trying to make the product
available again:
http://community.division-m.com/inde...ender-license/

I will be replying to that post, I don't want to see this product
disappear...

Best Regards,

--
! _\|/_ Sylvain /
! (o o) Member-+-David-Suzuki-Fdn/EFF/Red+Cross/Planetary-Society-+-
oO-( )-Oo WORK HARDER!... Millions on welfare depend on you!

On Mon, 23 Nov 2015 22:22:30 -0500, B00ze wrote:

On 2015-11-22 10:00, (PeteCresswell) wrote:

Went to purchase DriveBender and the site flipped me to a page
announcing it's discontinuation - with no option to purchase.

Can you believe this? I don't have DriveBender but learned of it from
here, and immediately I wanted it (Landing Zone, Duplication by Folder,
drives readable with the pool offline, are you kidding me?! I'm
drooling). And now with your post I've just learned that what looks to
be the main programmer is leaving :-(

So I went to the DB Forums, seems they are trying to make the product
available again:
http://community.division-m.com/inde...ender-license/

I will be replying to that post, I don't want to see this product
disappear...

I've been using it for a few years now and have nothing but good to say
about it. I have a few extra licenses lying around, but selling them now
wouldn't help the company so I'm glad there's an effort being made to keep
the product/company afloat.

--

Char Jackson

Per Char Jackson:
I've been using it for a few years now and have nothing but good to say
about it. I have a few extra licenses lying around, but selling them now
wouldn't help the company so I'm glad there's an effort being made to keep
the product/company afloat.

I just got an email from them containing a temporary license key to keep
my install going until end-of-year - by which time they hope to have
worked out re-implementation of sales/licensing.
--
Pete Cresswell

On 2015-11-22 10:00, (PeteCresswell) wrote:

Spent the last 2 weeks getting a Window 7/Drive Bender box up, running,
and loaded as my NAS backup.

Went to purchase DriveBender and the site flipped me to a page
announcing it's discontinuation - with no option to purchase.

Oh well...

Hey Pete, I started investigating DB. I was under the impression that
your file structure on the many disks would be merged but NOT altered.
And then I see this on the DB Forum:

Directory of H:\
07/28/2015 03:57 PM {E03DB860-A1C9-4A0D-BD79-6DB5326E8293}.PI.$DRIVEBENDER
07/26/2015 11:11 AM {F8B7EF64-B8A4-4F5B-97B6-87E6F0E075B3}
07/27/2015 11:38 AM {F8B7EF64-B8A4-4F5B-97B6-87E6F0E075B3}.MP.$DRIVEBENDER
07/18/2015 04:44 PM
{fbfd657b-0130-48be-9655-e9c75da1b80e}.VOL.$DRIVEBENDER

This sure looks like the file structure gets destroyed by DB. I was
under the impression that with DB, we could access single files and
folders on individual disks just fine when the array was not loaded
(e.g. under WinPE or Linux). Is this not true?

Thanks.
Best Regards,

--
! _\|/_ Sylvain /
! (o o) Member-+-David-Suzuki-Fdn/EFF/Red+Cross/Planetary-Society-+-
oO-( )-Oo Fire at Will. No, No WORF! Not Commander Riker!

On Thu, 21 Jan 2016 19:34:51 -0500, B00ze wrote:

On 2015-11-22 10:00, (PeteCresswell) wrote:

Spent the last 2 weeks getting a Window 7/Drive Bender box up, running,
and loaded as my NAS backup.

Went to purchase DriveBender and the site flipped me to a page
announcing it's discontinuation - with no option to purchase.

Oh well...

Hey Pete, I started investigating DB. I was under the impression that
your file structure on the many disks would be merged but NOT altered.
And then I see this on the DB Forum:

Directory of H:\
07/28/2015 03:57 PM {E03DB860-A1C9-4A0D-BD79-6DB5326E8293}.PI.$DRIVEBENDER
07/26/2015 11:11 AM {F8B7EF64-B8A4-4F5B-97B6-87E6F0E075B3}
07/27/2015 11:38 AM {F8B7EF64-B8A4-4F5B-97B6-87E6F0E075B3}.MP.$DRIVEBENDER
07/18/2015 04:44 PM
{fbfd657b-0130-48be-9655-e9c75da1b80e}.VOL.$DRIVEBENDER

This sure looks like the file structure gets destroyed by DB.

Not true. See below.

I was
under the impression that with DB, we could access single files and
folders on individual disks just fine when the array was not loaded
(e.g. under WinPE or Linux). Is this not true?


That part is true. DB creates those high level folders in the root of each
drive in the pool, but once you drill down to the next level you're right
back in familiar territory.

One of the nice things about DB is that you can yank a drive out of the pool
and connect it to any other PC and read/write/modify any files that happen
to be stored on that drive.

Do you want some fine print? OK, then, when you set up a DB array one of the
initial tasks is to replicate the entire folder structure across every drive
in the pool. As a result, when you pull a drive out of the pool, you'll see
every single folder that exists anywhere, but your specific drive that you
yanked will only have files in some of those folders.

I think the advantage of doing it that way is that when you go to save a
file the only decision or work that has to be done is to decide which
physical drive will receive the file. The folder structure will already be
in place. Another way to say it, and sort of a related task, is that when
you create a new folder (after the array has been created) it automatically
gets created on each drive in the pool. That way it's ready to receive files
if/when the time comes.

BTW, DB also has the capability to tag specific folders as mirrored folders.
Whenever you save a file to a mirrored folder, a second copy is saved to the
same folder structure location on a different physical drive. Mirrored
copies of a file are never stored on the same physical drive.

I've been using DB since 2009 or 2010 and I'm quite happy with it. I
currently have a 32TB volume and a 28TB volume configured. The pros of DB
are mostly self-evident, but a couple of cons are that when DB is under
pressure it tends to gobble a big chunk of my admittedly anemic CPU and
filesystem I/O seems to drag a bit, although it very quickly recovers. That
PC has an AMD Athlon 64 X2 6400+, not exactly robust by current standards,
so you may not even notice.

--

Char Jackson

Per B00ze:
Hey Pete, I started investigating DB. I was under the impression that
your file structure on the many disks would be merged but NOT altered.
And then I see this on the DB Forum:

Directory of H:\
07/28/2015 03:57 PM {E03DB860-A1C9-4A0D-BD79-6DB5326E8293}.PI.$DRIVEBENDER
07/26/2015 11:11 AM {F8B7EF64-B8A4-4F5B-97B6-87E6F0E075B3}
07/27/2015 11:38 AM {F8B7EF64-B8A4-4F5B-97B6-87E6F0E075B3}.MP.$DRIVEBENDER
07/18/2015 04:44 PM
{fbfd657b-0130-48be-9655-e9c75da1b80e}.VOL.$DRIVEBENDER

This sure looks like the file structure gets destroyed by DB. I was
under the impression that with DB, we could access single files and
folders on individual disks just fine when the array was not loaded
(e.g. under WinPE or Linux). Is this not true?

That has not been my experience. Just to test it, I killed the DB
service and accessed various disks/files "Manually" (i.e. via Windows
Explorer) and the ones I checked looked good.

I think the GUID-sounding names are something to do with DB's redundancy
mechanism.

BTW: They seem to be back to selling DB licenses.... I got one for five
bucks.
--
Pete Cresswell

On 2016-01-22 08:30, (PeteCresswell) wrote:

Per B00ze:
This sure looks like the file structure gets destroyed by DB. I was
under the impression that with DB, we could access single files and
folders on individual disks just fine when the array was not loaded
(e.g. under WinPE or Linux). Is this not true?

That has not been my experience. Just to test it, I killed the DB
service and accessed various disks/files "Manually" (i.e. via Windows
Explorer) and the ones I checked looked good.

Ya, so Char also said. I'm "investigating it" by reading the forums, I
haven't installed it yet to test it myself (it's useless on the laptop
I'm currently using, with only a single HD).

BTW: They seem to be back to selling DB licenses....
I got one for five bucks.

I saw that, but $5? To me that looks bad for the future; too cheap, how
the hell are they going to fund development? I also saw your numerous
posts as you were testing it, lol. Unfortunately, the answers you got
were less than stellar! Everyone else was the same: mostly I see people
getting the "Did you open a support ticket?" answer, which sucks. I have
since discovered "DrivePool" by StableBit. I am very early in reading
things, but their forums ARE visited by people from StableBit, so this
early in my musings, they look to be the better option, ie. Better support.

Best Regards,

--
! _\|/_ Sylvain /
! (o o) Member-+-David-Suzuki-Fdn/EFF/Red+Cross/Planetary-Society-+-
oO-( )-Oo Redundant book title: "Macs for dummies."

On 2016-01-21 20:40, Char Jackson wrote:

On Thu, 21 Jan 2016 19:34:51 -0500, B00ze wrote:

On 2015-11-22 10:00, (PeteCresswell) wrote:

Spent the last 2 weeks getting a Window 7/Drive Bender box up, running,
and loaded as my NAS backup.

Went to purchase DriveBender and the site flipped me to a page
announcing it's discontinuation - with no option to purchase.

Oh well...

Hey Pete, I started investigating DB. I was under the impression that
your file structure on the many disks would be merged but NOT altered.
And then I see this on the DB Forum:

Directory of H:\
07/28/2015 03:57 PM {E03DB860-A1C9-4A0D-BD79-6DB5326E8293}.PI.$DRIVEBENDER
07/26/2015 11:11 AM {F8B7EF64-B8A4-4F5B-97B6-87E6F0E075B3}
07/27/2015 11:38 AM {F8B7EF64-B8A4-4F5B-97B6-87E6F0E075B3}.MP.$DRIVEBENDER
07/18/2015 04:44 PM
{fbfd657b-0130-48be-9655-e9c75da1b80e}.VOL.$DRIVEBENDER

This sure looks like the file structure gets destroyed by DB.

Not true. See below.

I was
under the impression that with DB, we could access single files and
folders on individual disks just fine when the array was not loaded
(e.g. under WinPE or Linux). Is this not true?


That part is true. DB creates those high level folders in the root of each
drive in the pool, but once you drill down to the next level you're right
back in familiar territory.

Ah! Good! And what happens if I drill down, while booted in WinPE, and
dump a file in there? I want to pool my drives, but when I boot WinPE to
image the system drive, I want to save that to one of the pool's drives,
and I want those backups to show-up later once the pool is online again.

And there was another good question I saw which didn't get a good
answer: What if I image my system drive, then use the system for a week,
changing things in the pool, and then later, restore that image; will
the pool, in its later state, survive? DriveBender must NOT save any
pool state information outside of the pool; saving the name of the pool
or the registration key on the system drive is ok, but not much else. I
re-image constantly...

Do you want some fine print? OK, then, when you set up a DB array one of the
initial tasks is to replicate the entire folder structure across every drive
in the pool. As a result, when you pull a drive out of the pool, you'll see
every single folder that exists anywhere, but your specific drive that you
yanked will only have files in some of those folders.

Ya, understood, that is good to me.

I think the advantage of doing it that way is that when you go to save a
file the only decision or work that has to be done is to decide which
physical drive will receive the file. The folder structure will already be
in place. Another way to say it, and sort of a related task, is that when
you create a new folder (after the array has been created) it automatically
gets created on each drive in the pool. That way it's ready to receive files
if/when the time comes.

Sure, that sounds good.

BTW, DB also has the capability to tag specific folders as mirrored folders.
Whenever you save a file to a mirrored folder, a second copy is saved to the
same folder structure location on a different physical drive. Mirrored
copies of a file are never stored on the same physical drive.

Does it do read-stripes like DrivePool? Ie. if there are multiple copies
of a file then it reads bits from all copies at once...?

I've been using DB since 2009 or 2010 and I'm quite happy with it. I
currently have a 32TB volume and a 28TB volume configured. The pros of DB
are mostly self-evident, but a couple of cons are that when DB is under
pressure it tends to gobble a big chunk of my admittedly anemic CPU and
filesystem I/O seems to drag a bit, although it very quickly recovers. That
PC has an AMD Athlon 64 X2 6400+, not exactly robust by current standards,
so you may not even notice.

That won't be a problem for me; with memory so cheap I plan to use 32BG
(upcoming system). Did you ever try DrivePool by StableBit (might've
been called covecube before)? From someone just reading-up on both
programs, DrivePool sure seems to be more "polished" if you will. The
forums are packed with answers from the company itself, there are WIKIs,
plug-ins, etc. The DriveBender forums are a disappointment so far (this
doesn't mean that DB is not the better product, I just dont know, all I
see without testing are the forums and documentation).

Best Regards,

--
! _\|/_ Sylvain /
! (o o) Member-+-David-Suzuki-Fdn/EFF/Red+Cross/Planetary-Society-+-
oO-( )-Oo When I grow up, I wanna be like Riker! -Bashir

On Fri, 22 Jan 2016 21:02:30 -0500, B00ze wrote:

On 2016-01-21 20:40, Char Jackson wrote:

On Thu, 21 Jan 2016 19:34:51 -0500, B00ze wrote:

Hey Pete, I started investigating DB. I was under the impression that
your file structure on the many disks would be merged but NOT altered.
And then I see this on the DB Forum:

Directory of H:\
07/28/2015 03:57 PM {E03DB860-A1C9-4A0D-BD79-6DB5326E8293}.PI.$DRIVEBENDER
07/26/2015 11:11 AM {F8B7EF64-B8A4-4F5B-97B6-87E6F0E075B3}
07/27/2015 11:38 AM {F8B7EF64-B8A4-4F5B-97B6-87E6F0E075B3}.MP.$DRIVEBENDER
07/18/2015 04:44 PM
{fbfd657b-0130-48be-9655-e9c75da1b80e}.VOL.$DRIVEBENDER

This sure looks like the file structure gets destroyed by DB.

Not true. See below.

I was
under the impression that with DB, we could access single files and
folders on individual disks just fine when the array was not loaded
(e.g. under WinPE or Linux). Is this not true?


That part is true. DB creates those high level folders in the root of each
drive in the pool, but once you drill down to the next level you're right
back in familiar territory.

Ah! Good! And what happens if I drill down, while booted in WinPE, and
dump a file in there? I want to pool my drives, but when I boot WinPE to
image the system drive, I want to save that to one of the pool's drives,
and I want those backups to show-up later once the pool is online again.

DB doesn't keep track of your files, so that won't be a problem. DB only
keeps track of the drives that you've added to the DB pool. With the pool
shut down, you can make all of the file changes that you want. Add, move,
delete, copy, etc. All of those changes will be visible when you restart the
pool.

And there was another good question I saw which didn't get a good
answer: What if I image my system drive, then use the system for a week,
changing things in the pool, and then later, restore that image; will
the pool, in its later state, survive? DriveBender must NOT save any
pool state information outside of the pool; saving the name of the pool
or the registration key on the system drive is ok, but not much else. I
re-image constantly...

Yep, that's fine, as well. A list of the pool names and their GUIDs are kept
on the system drive, along with registration info, but nothing else about
the pool(s) is stored on the system drive. In between system images, as long
as you didn't add a new pool, delete a pool, or change the name of an
existing pool, you'll be fine. Simply put, if you make those kinds of
changes and then restore a system drive from before, then DB won't know
about the changes.

BTW, DB also has the capability to tag specific folders as mirrored folders.
Whenever you save a file to a mirrored folder, a second copy is saved to the
same folder structure location on a different physical drive. Mirrored
copies of a file are never stored on the same physical drive.

Does it do read-stripes like DrivePool? Ie. if there are multiple copies
of a file then it reads bits from all copies at once...?

Sorry, no. The feature is pretty well limited to redundancy, meaning if you
were to lose a pooled drive, your mirrored files would remain available
without you having to do anything.

In fact, I've had multiple cases where I've 'lost' drives and the only way I
knew was that I could no longer write to the array. When a drive fails, the
array goes into read-only mode. All files stored on non-failed drives
continue to be seamlessly available, but you can't save changes or store new
files. With the obvious clue that something is wrong, you fire up Drive
Bender Manager, the app used to configure everything, and on the main screen
it tells you that the array is in read-only mode, so you drill down to the
drives page and you see that one or more drives are offline. In my case, I
had a dodgy set of SATA cables. I replaced all of the cables in about 2011
and haven't had any failures after that.


I've been using DB since 2009 or 2010 and I'm quite happy with it. I
currently have a 32TB volume and a 28TB volume configured. The pros of DB
are mostly self-evident, but a couple of cons are that when DB is under
pressure it tends to gobble a big chunk of my admittedly anemic CPU and
filesystem I/O seems to drag a bit, although it very quickly recovers. That
PC has an AMD Athlon 64 X2 6400+, not exactly robust by current standards,
so you may not even notice.

That won't be a problem for me; with memory so cheap I plan to use 32BG
(upcoming system). Did you ever try DrivePool by StableBit (might've
been called covecube before)? From someone just reading-up on both
programs, DrivePool sure seems to be more "polished" if you will. The
forums are packed with answers from the company itself, there are WIKIs,
plug-ins, etc. The DriveBender forums are a disappointment so far (this
doesn't mean that DB is not the better product, I just dont know, all I
see without testing are the forums and documentation).

I have not used DrivePool and in fact wasn't aware of it until you mentioned
it. I fell into Drive Bender when MS removed the drive pooling capability
from their then-current Windows Server software. At that time, everyone
seemed to be heading over to Drive Bender, so I followed suit.

Regarding the DB forum, I agree that it's a bit lackluster. It seems to be a
fairly small community, speaking of the forum itself and not necessarily the
DB user base, with the same few folks providing replies. Frequently, those
replies are suggestions to open a ticket. In my case, I did end up opening a
couple of tickets and got email responses each time within about 5-15
minutes, but I agree that a more active forum would be a big plus.

It wouldn't surprise me at all to learn that Drive Bender and DrivePool can
co-exist on the same system, so you might end up trying both, at the same
time, to see which you like best. That would be an interesting experiment.

--

Char Jackson

On Sat, 23 Jan 2016 12:08:21 -0600, Char Jackson wrote:

Sorry, no. The feature is pretty well limited to redundancy, meaning if you
were to lose a pooled drive, your mirrored files would remain available
without you having to do anything.

In fact, I've had multiple cases where I've 'lost' drives and the only way I
knew was that I could no longer write to the array.

I should have mentioned here that DB does have the capability to send emails
when things go wrong, but I don't have that piece configured. It can also
tie into a SMART monitor, but again, I don't have that configured.

--

Char Jackson

Good day all.

On 2016-01-23 13:08, Char Jackson wrote:

[snip]

Ah! Good! And what happens if I drill down, while booted in WinPE, and
dump a file in there? I want to pool my drives, but when I boot WinPE to
image the system drive, I want to save that to one of the pool's drives,
and I want those backups to show-up later once the pool is online again.

DB doesn't keep track of your files, so that won't be a problem. DB only
keeps track of the drives that you've added to the DB pool. With the pool
shut down, you can make all of the file changes that you want. Add, move,
delete, copy, etc. All of those changes will be visible when you restart the
pool.

Excellent! This is just TOO flexible, lol :-)

And there was another good question I saw which didn't get a good
answer: What if I image my system drive, then use the system for a week,
changing things in the pool, and then later, restore that image; will
the pool, in its later state, survive? DriveBender must NOT save any
pool state information outside of the pool; saving the name of the pool
or the registration key on the system drive is ok, but not much else. I
re-image constantly...

Yep, that's fine, as well. A list of the pool names and their GUIDs are kept
on the system drive, along with registration info, but nothing else about
the pool(s) is stored on the system drive. In between system images, as long
as you didn't add a new pool, delete a pool, or change the name of an
existing pool, you'll be fine. Simply put, if you make those kinds of
changes and then restore a system drive from before, then DB won't know
about the changes.

Excellent again! I will raise those same questions on the DrivePool
forums when I have time (quite some time away, I need to read those
forums first). It's hard to judge which is the better product; they are
so similar.

BTW, DB also has the capability to tag specific folders as mirrored folders.
Whenever you save a file to a mirrored folder, a second copy is saved to the
same folder structure location on a different physical drive. Mirrored
copies of a file are never stored on the same physical drive.

Does it do read-stripes like DrivePool? Ie. if there are multiple copies
of a file then it reads bits from all copies at once...?

Sorry, no. The feature is pretty well limited to redundancy, meaning if you
were to lose a pooled drive, your mirrored files would remain available
without you having to do anything.

Ya, it only works on redundant files in DrivePool. But I may supplement
DB/DP with SnapRaid, and forgo duplication completely, or maybe just use
FlexRAID (yup, I found yet another pooling solution since I wrote here).

In fact, I've had multiple cases where I've 'lost' drives and the only way I
knew was that I could no longer write to the array. When a drive fails, the
array goes into read-only mode. All files stored on non-failed drives
continue to be seamlessly available, but you can't save changes or store new
files. With the obvious clue that something is wrong, you fire up Drive
Bender Manager, the app used to configure everything, and on the main screen
it tells you that the array is in read-only mode, so you drill down to the
drives page and you see that one or more drives are offline. In my case, I
had a dodgy set of SATA cables. I replaced all of the cables in about 2011
and haven't had any failures after that.

Wow, I've never lost a drive (one developed burn marks on the PCB but
kept going; another developed bad blocks, but kept running otherwise.)
However, since my new drives will be BIG, I am looking at some sort of
solution, because loosing one will be somewhat annoying. AND I want to
pool them, not RAID them, for obvious benefits...

I've been using DB since 2009 or 2010 and I'm quite happy with it. I
currently have a 32TB volume and a 28TB volume configured. The pros of DB
are mostly self-evident, but a couple of cons are that when DB is under
pressure it tends to gobble a big chunk of my admittedly anemic CPU and
filesystem I/O seems to drag a bit, although it very quickly recovers. That
PC has an AMD Athlon 64 X2 6400+, not exactly robust by current standards,
so you may not even notice.

That won't be a problem for me; with memory so cheap I plan to use 32BG
(upcoming system). Did you ever try DrivePool by StableBit (might've
been called covecube before)? From someone just reading-up on both
programs, DrivePool sure seems to be more "polished" if you will. The
forums are packed with answers from the company itself, there are WIKIs,
plug-ins, etc. The DriveBender forums are a disappointment so far (this
doesn't mean that DB is not the better product, I just dont know, all I
see without testing are the forums and documentation).

I have not used DrivePool and in fact wasn't aware of it until you mentioned
it. I fell into Drive Bender when MS removed the drive pooling capability
from their then-current Windows Server software. At that time, everyone
seemed to be heading over to Drive Bender, so I followed suit.

Ya, most references to DB or DP I've seen are about people moving off
WHS and losing the ability to pool drives.

Regarding the DB forum, I agree that it's a bit lackluster. It seems to be a
fairly small community, speaking of the forum itself and not necessarily the
DB user base, with the same few folks providing replies. Frequently, those
replies are suggestions to open a ticket. In my case, I did end up opening a
couple of tickets and got email responses each time within about 5-15
minutes, but I agree that a more active forum would be a big plus.

Agreed, lackluster it is. I love support; a forum with 10x the users,
including Division-M people, would be great.

It wouldn't surprise me at all to learn that Drive Bender and DrivePool can
co-exist on the same system, so you might end up trying both, at the same
time, to see which you like best. That would be an interesting experiment.

Ya, they probably can, lol, but I don't think I'll try it hehe.

Thank you.
Best Regards,

--
! _\|/_ Sylvain /
! (o o) Member-+-David-Suzuki-Fdn/EFF/Red+Cross/Planetary-Society-+-
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On Mon, 25 Jan 2016 21:15:46 -0500, B00ze wrote:

Good day all.

On 2016-01-23 13:08, Char Jackson wrote:

[snip]


BTW, DB also has the capability to tag specific folders as mirrored folders.
Whenever you save a file to a mirrored folder, a second copy is saved to the
same folder structure location on a different physical drive. Mirrored
copies of a file are never stored on the same physical drive.

Does it do read-stripes like DrivePool? Ie. if there are multiple copies
of a file then it reads bits from all copies at once...?

Sorry, no. The feature is pretty well limited to redundancy, meaning if you
were to lose a pooled drive, your mirrored files would remain available
without you having to do anything.

Ya, it only works on redundant files in DrivePool. But I may supplement
DB/DP with SnapRaid, and forgo duplication completely, or maybe just use
FlexRAID (yup, I found yet another pooling solution since I wrote here).

I very seriously considered SnapRaid several years ago (~2010-2011) but
never followed through. I also looked at FlexRAID at the time, but the
developer was making it a habit to disappear for months at a time. I'm
assuming that's no longer the case, but I haven't checked. Both are very
interesting applications.

In fact, I've had multiple cases where I've 'lost' drives and the only way I
knew was that I could no longer write to the array. When a drive fails, the
array goes into read-only mode. All files stored on non-failed drives
continue to be seamlessly available, but you can't save changes or store new
files. With the obvious clue that something is wrong, you fire up Drive
Bender Manager, the app used to configure everything, and on the main screen
it tells you that the array is in read-only mode, so you drill down to the
drives page and you see that one or more drives are offline. In my case, I
had a dodgy set of SATA cables. I replaced all of the cables in about 2011
and haven't had any failures after that.

Wow, I've never lost a drive (one developed burn marks on the PCB but
kept going; another developed bad blocks, but kept running otherwise.)
However, since my new drives will be BIG, I am looking at some sort of
solution, because loosing one will be somewhat annoying. AND I want to
pool them, not RAID them, for obvious benefits...

I don't think I ever had a real drive loss during my DB days. What I called
lost drives above were only a set of dodgy SATA cables. I use a couple of
PCIE SAS controllers with two SAS ports, then breakout cables that adapt the
two SAS ports to 8 SATA ports. I had to replace those cables once.

--

Char Jackson