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Drive Extender Options
http://www.mediasmartserver.net/forums/viewtopic.php?f=40&t=13527		 Page 1 of 1
Author:  T-Bone [ Wed Oct 30, 2013 10:51 pm ]
Post subject:  Drive Extender Options
So here are the options I currently see...

PoolHD

Drive Bender

Stablebit Drive Pool

What version do you guys suggest. I used one and it was extremely complex.
Author:  Comp1962 [ Thu Oct 31, 2013 7:53 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Drive Extender Options
I use Stablebit Drive Pool. Its user friendly and works very well. Very easy to setup and use. I have never had a negative experience with it that I can recall and recommend it to others as often as I can. I use it on both WHS2011 and WS2012E. Its the only storage solution I actually install on servers I build for others.
Author:  msawyer91 [ Thu Oct 31, 2013 8:54 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Drive Extender Options
I've used both StableBit and Drive Bender. I prefer Drive Bender because it seems to tolerate the hodgepodge of disks I have much better than StableBit. When I mixed SATA and USB disks, I found my backup service crashed often with write errors to the pool drive. Rebuilding the OS from scratch didn't help. Drive Bender was never a problem.

Using StableBit with one type of disks (either all SATA or all USB) works great; it just didn't seem to like me mixing the types. I don't know if it's because USB 2.0 is a lot slower and things were timing out.

Windows Storage Spaces don't like a disk mix either, even though it claims to support it. Overall I think Storage Spaces are slow at best. I'm quite disappointed in them.
Author:  Comp1962 [ Thu Oct 31, 2013 11:55 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Drive Extender Options
Interesting Matt. In my case I do not use external enclosures. I actually built my server large enough to house all my drives. I did some testing with an external enclosure which was connected eSATA not USB. My drives are a collection of mixed drive of different sizes. I have retired all the 1 and 1.5 TB Drives and am in the process of replacing all the 2TB Drives with larger 4TB Drives
Author:  Gardian [ Thu Oct 31, 2013 7:11 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Drive Extender Options
I bought drivebender before win2012E was thought of. I used it with the trial w2012e and it did what it did, nothing fancy, but not very configurable.
You added drives to the pool and that was it, I started using storage spaces instead of drive bender because storage spaces gave me choices.
Then I got the external EX-503 Lian LI 5 drive USB 3 and Comp1962 suggested I try Stablebit, I bought it and the scanner because SMART would not read the drives in the external so I figure the scanner might be a good replacement for SMART as SMART wouldn't read my icydock raid os either.

Stablebit drive pool is awesome, I added the drives, it asked me how many copies I wanted of each file (I said 3) and away it went. Worked great.

So then I install the stablebit scanner and it starts scanning the drives and BANG! all the drives disappeared, gone, no red lights or beeps on the EX-503, just gone. I rebooted it and the drives showed up for about 30 seconds and then gone again.

I thought maybe I had a bad external but then thought (maybe the scanner was hitting the 5 2tb drives to much and it was dropping out. So I uninstalled the stablebit scanner and all is well, Stablebit drive pool finished creating the X3 pool and the drives have not dropped out again. I have dropped 1.5 tb of data on them so far.

Since SMART won't read any of my drives, I installed the Jmicron software (both the icydock raid and the ex-503 use the same software) That was lucky and setup email alerts to email me if anything bad happens.

I would get Stablebit Drive Pool but skip the scanner. I may try the scanner again later but My guess is it will cause trouble again.
P.S. the drives were gone in usb3 and usb2 so it was the stablebit scanner that was (I guess) putting to much load on it.
All this being said, my w2012e is still in shakedown mode, I'm still running 2 X-501's for my main system and will for a few more years, I have invested ina lot of 2tb drives and my data needs are not huge yet. But i am getting this 2012e ready for down the road.

Dat my 2 cents...
Author:  Gardian [ Sat Nov 02, 2013 12:45 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Drive Extender Options
I had to post what I did today. To let you know how tuff stablebit drivepool is.
I took those 4 2tb drives out of the usb 3 external bays and moved them into the main server and booted up, no problem.
Stablebit drive pool started checking to make sure the pool was ok, took about 2-3 mins. and it was happy.

I even went into disk management in windows and changed drive letters and names on all the drives (except the Fantom Drivepool drive and it didn't care, I even rebooted just to make sure and it was still happy.
So I gots to say I'm sold, I tried to break it and couldn't.

I'll try the Stablebit scanner again now that the drives are inside on the motherboard and card and see what happens.

I think I would use storage spaces before drivebender and I don't know about that other one you listed.
Goodluck

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Author:  Comp1962 [ Sat Nov 02, 2013 11:18 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Drive Extender Options
Wait till you yank the wrong drive out of the server only to be informed a drive went missing then plug it back in and see how nice Stablebit reacts. Now I do not make a habit of hot swapping my drives but on my server its not a big deal. Typically I will only yank a drive out that I am removing but man its embarrassing to yank the wrong drive but thankfully Stablebit Drive Pool is very user friendly.
Author:  Gardian [ Sun Nov 03, 2013 12:20 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Drive Extender Options
I took your advice, (that's why I went in and renamed them) to label the drives so when you need to pull one 6 months from now i would know which is which. These are top to bottom just like they are in the bays, make life easy. :D
Author:  T-Bone [ Sun Nov 03, 2013 2:55 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Drive Extender Options
Comp1962 is that sarcasm or a compliment to stablebit. Haha I'm at work so I'm not reading things correctly. Haha
Author:  Comp1962 [ Sun Nov 03, 2013 5:20 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Drive Extender Options
T-Bone its not a complaint or sarcasm....heck I did it myself. I have 20 Drive Trays so all my drives are named with the tray number along with the make and capacity to help me locate my drives.

I try to label everything to help me remember and I have a chart which I do need to update to tell me which drives are where, the make, model, capacity and the date of purchase so I know immediately if a drive is under warranty or not.

Having a larger server may seem like a cool thing but keeping track of things can be a PITA.
Author:  T-Bone [ Wed Nov 06, 2013 8:54 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Drive Extender Options
Sorry comp I was referring to this comment: missing then plug it back in and see how nice Stablebit reacts

I didn't know if that was sarcasm. thanks for the info though this is exact what I was looking to see in this post.
Author:  Comp1962 [ Wed Nov 06, 2013 9:06 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Drive Extender Options
I think you will like Stablebit Drive Pool its been a perfect solution for me and when I migrated from WHS2011 to WS2012 and the storage pool was there it was perfect. I did have to change some of the WHS2011 folders and then create the shares to access the drive pool shares but it was a painless experience, Had I needed to migrate my entire storage pool I would most likely not have jumped so quickly on migrating to WS2012E.
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