I do urge you to keep a copy of all the data you put on the server. If something were to go horribly wrong then your data would be lost. Never consider the data on your server as backed up even if there is redundancy on the server. A backup means that your data exists in two or more places. Some store their data offsite, others to the cloud and others on site each storing data where they are most comfortable.

Now I happen to like Stablebit and its proven itself but its still in beta and things can happen which is why you should never fully rely on it or run it in a production machine. This doesn't mean your data is not safe its just that during a beta anything can happen. I can understand your desire to have all your data in one central location because it makes good sense but do not neglect having a backup should a god forbit event occur.

On another note I will say also that not all data needs to be backed up but the way to determine whats important and what is not important is to give some thought to the data your storing on your server and if you can not absolutely afford to lose it then its important and should be backed up.

If you read through the forums you will get an idea of what I am refering to when someone has an issue with their server and the only place their data exists is on the server. All the stories are similar in that all the family photos or documents or what have you are on the server and only on the server and the big concern is not losing their data. If their data were backed up the posts would be less urgent about the data and more so towards getting the server running and still preserving the data of course but the urgency would be much lower in nature.

I hope I explained this well enough to convince you of having good backups. The data is often worth more than the hardware its stored on.

_________________
Exploring the possibilities!

Migrated from WHS2011 to WS2012E: HIGHLANDER

~ Norco 4220 Enclosure
~ Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD5
~ AMD Phenom II X4 995 3.2 GHz
~ 8 GB Corsair Vengeance DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800)
~ 3 Supermicro AOC-SASLP-MV8

Oh I agree, which is why I kept the original source/location intact on another box. Thanks again for your well thought out and detailed post!

I do however, have another problem. I already removed one of the 2TB drives from the pool, but now cannot remove the last because Stablebit says that I still have a folder on there. However, I am unable to remove said folder. When I'm on the Shared Server Folders tab in Stablebit it shows my Music folder as a pooled share (as I originally wanted). I tried to move that folder since my only options are to Open, Move, or View Properties, but since that folder already exists in the other drives, I am unable to, therefore unable to move that last drive from the pool to uninstall and retry Stablebit from scratch.

I'm sure there is a simple solution for most everyone here while I am still learning about WHS.

I am not quite certain I fully understand what your actually asking. The issue you mention may be something that WHS2011 controls and not Stablebit Drivepool or an issue that must be wored out from the Dashboard itself but at this time I an not fully clear on how your server is setup and if the folder in question is controlled by Stablebit or WHS.

A drive pool is nothing more then a grouping of physical drives often referred to as JBOD (Just a Bunch of Drives) that appear to the end user as one big drive. The drive pool contains a file system to refrence all the Shared Folders and Files stored and duplicated. If a duplication is enabled then your files would exist on 2 physical drives. Stablebit Drive Pool does a good job keeping the pool balanced meaning it spreads your files accross the drives rather then fill up one drive then the next. In this type of environment you can use consumer class drives of different sizes. Stablebit Drive Pool also keeps the drives using the native Windows File System called NTFS so you can remove a drive and read it from another Windows Computer.

When you remove a drive from the Drive Pool, Stablebit will then move the files stored on the removed drive to other drives if the drive is present. In the event of a failed or missing drive only the duplicated files will be copied to another drive and the files that were not duplicated will be lost. This only occurs if there is room to move the files to on drives which do not contain those files already. If a drive if a drive is removed because its failed then you can then add another drive and be back in business and Stablebit would begin to use that drive to rebuild the drive pool.

There are drives which are part of your drive pool and drives that are not managed by the drive pool. Recently Stablebit Drive Pool was fully integrated into WHS2011. I ran it prior to that integration on a Test Server until my WHS2011 license expired. I did resinstall a fully licensed version of WHS2011 but opted to wait until the M4 version of Stablebit was released before I reinstalled Stablebit Drive Pool for testing to evaluate the performance aspects of the software. I only mention this because I am not quite certain how the integration is working. I know that WHS2011 was left to control something while Stablebit Drive Pool controls the pool. Your issue may lay in that grey area or it may be the result of a bug within Stablebit and as such you may want to join the Stablebit Community and post your question there. I have seen some alerts generated by Stablebit that were somewhat weird and not really relivent, with no impact to the performance and structure of the drive pool. I have also seen the entire drive pool go missing requiring the server to be rebooted to have it reappear but this often happens when the software has been upgraded.

As I have previously mentioned I do like Stablebit Drive Pool alot and more so then the DE that existed in WHS v1. It is in Beta so anything can happen but for the most part its been stable and continues to look very promising.

_________________
Exploring the possibilities!

Migrated from WHS2011 to WS2012E: HIGHLANDER

~ Norco 4220 Enclosure
~ Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD5
~ AMD Phenom II X4 995 3.2 GHz
~ 8 GB Corsair Vengeance DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800)
~ 3 Supermicro AOC-SASLP-MV8

Sorry if I wasn't clear.

Here is what I WANT to do. I don't want the default folders on the system drive. I want them on one of the 2TB drives that I have and use the other 2TB to mirror the other.

Right now I'm trying to remove a drive from the pool, but am unable to do so because a folder still resides on that drive (Music). I took screenshots using PSR, but of course .mht isn't allowed for uploading so you could see my issue. I zipped it if you would like to see what I'm doing wrong.