Hi,

Can someone please offer their thoughts on my drive configuration?

-I have 4 x 1TB drives
-I have 'Duplication' turned on for all files

Here's my thoughts...

-By what I can tell from the 'Disk Management' Add-in, disk 3 ((Bay 4 (Top)) fills with initial files then duplicates across Disk 1 (Bay 2) & Disk 2 (Bay 3). The system drive ((Disk 0 (Bay 1)) is not filling at all.
-Am I wasting money by having the 1TB drive as a system drive?
-Should I just have a 500GB as the system drive?
-I also plan on upgrading disks to the seagate 1.5 TB before too long as well. Can someone provide a HDD config for me at all?

The System drive only begins taking files once the other drives are full. So eventually it will be used.

Looks to be working as designed.
This is the reason why, I personally do not recommend changing out the OS drive.

There is an upside though.
When you start upsizing to larger drives you will have the extra space on drive #0 for data to be stored during the migration.

Instead of swapping the 1 TB drives for 1.5 TB you might want to consider an eSata port multiplier & then add more drives as needed.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... _-16111048

_________________
Chris Bickerstaff
HP MSS DataVault X510
Core 2 Quad Core Q9550s
4GB Mushkin Ram
TR4MB eSata Enclosure
TR4UB USB Enclosure
Netgear WNDR3700
UPS APC 1500 XS LCD

You should not need anything bigger than 500GB as the system drive. If you need more storage space, you should get the Sans Digital TR4M as suggested above. I have the original 500 GB system drive and seven (7) 1.5 TB drives in the storage pool of my MSS (EX470). Four (4) of the 1.5 TB drives are in a TR4M esata box. I've attached a screenshot of my Disk Management addin for you to see my configuration.

I like what you've done cavediver...I have a ways to go before I get to that level but that's where I want to be.

As far as the port multiplier goes, I will need to look at buying something like this closer to home (Australia) as Newegg don't ship internationally.

This is what I have at the moment...

I hope you all don't think of this as hijacking the thread, but I have a question related to HDD layout and storage balancing.

When I first got my MSS I didn't really know how it all worked. I was using the 500GB drive that came with it and an external WD 500GB drive. The external drive was giving me issues, so I decided to remove and all my files were then stored on the System drive.

I have now succesfully installed 2 WD Green 1TB drives, however, take a look at my setup on the image...



Is it normal for the MSS not to have moved all data between the new drives? I see everyone else's System drive between 10-20% and I'm wondering if there's anything I need, should, or could do to move the data.

Important to note is that it has not gone up from 49% since the new drives were added and that I have Duplication turned on on all my folders.

Thanks!

Try turning off duplication & give it a while to move data.
Then turn duplication back on.
I did this once and it redistributed the data accross the drives.

Yes, it is normal for one drive to fill up and the move on to the next drive.
Usually the OS drive is the last one to store data.

If this does not get everything how you want it, There is a way to force it to do the job.
But, then again there is really nothing wrong with the way that it is

_________________
Chris Bickerstaff
HP MSS DataVault X510
Core 2 Quad Core Q9550s
4GB Mushkin Ram
TR4MB eSata Enclosure
TR4UB USB Enclosure
Netgear WNDR3700
UPS APC 1500 XS LCD

Pibe38, If you try this, please report back here with an image so we can see how you went.

Ok, so I backed up my server to an external drive and turned off duplication on all my shares. After a while... this is what it looks like...



It seems it removes the duplicated data from the newer storage drives instead of the System drive.

I'm going to let it go through a couple more of balances, and then turn duplication back on, but it seems odd.

Thoughts?

If you really think you need to get the data off of the system drive, you will have to use LZReallocator. You can get it here: http://vanelsberg.homeserver.com/public/whs/LZreallocator.zip

Or be a dinosaur like me and backup all your data, then restore server to factory settings, then put data back on server, then reconfigure server.

Uh yea, that works too.

_________________
Chris Bickerstaff
HP MSS DataVault X510
Core 2 Quad Core Q9550s
4GB Mushkin Ram
TR4MB eSata Enclosure
TR4UB USB Enclosure
Netgear WNDR3700
UPS APC 1500 XS LCD

Pibe38, any luck?

Not really. After turning duplication back on for all shares the System dirve remains at 49% and my two other drives are both at 11%. The MSS may have spread the data more evenly, however, backups have also increased in size so that could be it.

In other words, nothing has changed. Turning duplication off and back on did not do anything for me.

This utility that cavediver mentions will force the data to another drive.

_________________
Chris Bickerstaff
HP MSS DataVault X510
Core 2 Quad Core Q9550s
4GB Mushkin Ram
TR4MB eSata Enclosure
TR4UB USB Enclosure
Netgear WNDR3700
UPS APC 1500 XS LCD