Build a USN Journal with Drive Bender Drive Pool

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thejesse
Posts: 2
Joined: Sun Jan 06, 2013 10:47 pm

Build a USN Journal with Drive Bender Drive Pool

Post by thejesse »

I'm using Drive Bender (www.drivebender.com) to merge a couple of drives. It's great for the most part but I am sad that it does not play well with Everything. Everything is unable to create a USN journal on the pooled volume. I will be in touch with the drive bender folks about this as well, but wondered if this kind of thing has been encountered with drive pooling configurations and overcome by anyone here.
void
Developer
Posts: 15096
Joined: Fri Oct 16, 2009 11:31 pm

Re: Build a USN Journal with Drive Bender Drive Pool

Post by void »

I will look into drive bender, thanks for bringing this to my attention.
void
Developer
Posts: 15096
Joined: Fri Oct 16, 2009 11:31 pm

Re: Build a USN Journal with Drive Bender Drive Pool

Post by void »

Drive bender does not support the basic device IO controls for NTFS USN Journals.

Your best bet would be to use Everything version 1.3.0 or later with folder indexing.
thejesse
Posts: 2
Joined: Sun Jan 06, 2013 10:47 pm

Re: Build a USN Journal with Drive Bender Drive Pool

Post by thejesse »

Great. That seems to work. Other than indexing much slower than the USN method are there any other downsides to the folder method?
void
Developer
Posts: 15096
Joined: Fri Oct 16, 2009 11:31 pm

Re: Build a USN Journal with Drive Bender Drive Pool

Post by void »

Folder monitoring is not as reliable as NTFS monitoring.

Many file system changes in a small amount of time can be missed by Everything.

Set your folder indexes to update often to account for this.

By default folder indexes update every day.
You can make them update as often as every few minutes depending on the size of the folders.
The more folders you have the more demanding on the system it is to index and update.
engenius
Posts: 2
Joined: Thu May 08, 2014 2:12 am

Re: Build a USN Journal with Drive Bender Drive Pool

Post by engenius »

I just started using DrivePool too and folder indexing is not working as well as I had hoped. I think I might have a possible solution though that should be relatively easy to implement in a future version of Everything.

DrivePool just hides the real drives, and you can still use usn jornaling on those drives. The problem is that the files are spread across the drives, so files that should be in the same folder show up all over the place (e.g. M:\PoolPart.[hashcode]\folder1\file1.txt, N:\PoolPart.[hashcode]\folder1\file2.txt, etc.) These files are stored in hidden folders, PoolPart.[hashcode] (hashcode is unique to each drive), at the root of each drive and are remapped by DrivePool to appear like they belong to a single drive letter. So adding an option to Everything that can remap specific folders to a drive letter (either right before or right after storing to the database) should easily solve the issue. If I could tell Everything that M:\PoolPart.[hashcode] and N:\PoolPart.[hashcode] should both be mapped to the D:\ drive, this would cause the files above to show up as D:\folder1\file1.txt and D:\folder\file2.txt.

I rely on Everything like a lot of people do and folder indexing is just not cutting it unfortunately. I would greatly appreciate this feature and I'm sure many others would as well. Thanks void for making a great tool and hopefully for considering this feature. ;)
extratype
Posts: 10
Joined: Thu May 18, 2017 12:25 pm

Re: Build a USN Journal with Drive Bender Drive Pool

Post by extratype »

Index each disk and remap its path: http://www.voidtools.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=5933, like

ntfs_volume_guids="\\\\?\\Volume{C DRIVE GUID}","\\\\?\\Volume{DISK1 GUID}","\\\\?\\Volume{DISK2 GUID}"
ntfs_volume_paths="C:","D:","D:"
ntfs_volume_roots="","PoolPart.GUID1","PoolPart.GUID2"
ntfs_volume_includes=1,1,1
ntfs_volume_load_recent_changes=0,0,0
ntfs_volume_include_onlys="","",""
ntfs_volume_monitors=1,1,1

Now you can monitor your pool in real time :)
Entries may be duplicated as they reside in each disk.
therube
Posts: 4580
Joined: Thu Sep 03, 2009 6:48 pm

Re: Build a USN Journal with Drive Bender Drive Pool

Post by therube »

(I wouldn't have thought of it until you mentioned it, ... similarly mentioned here, Allow custom remapping of file paths.)
engenius
Posts: 2
Joined: Thu May 08, 2014 2:12 am

Re: Build a USN Journal with Drive Bender Drive Pool

Post by engenius »

Oh my god. This is so cool. I've been waiting for this for 3 years but it was absolutely worth the wait. Thank you! :D
getho
Posts: 20
Joined: Thu Oct 13, 2011 5:01 am

Re: Build a USN Journal with Drive Bender Drive Pool

Post by getho »

Hey sorry for the zombie thread thing,
but I'm just wondering 2 things:
1. IS this still the best way to get everything working with drive bender?
2. Is there a better way to get fast searching on a pooled drive?
3. WHoops one more: (for any benders out there) if you do a search on the individual drives, and then delete files directly from within everything, will drive bender freak? (I don't know if drive bender has it's own DB of files, that could be stuffed by manipulating the component drives of a pool)
extratype
Posts: 10
Joined: Thu May 18, 2017 12:25 pm

Re: Build a USN Journal with Drive Bender Drive Pool

Post by extratype »

getho wrote: Sat Jul 25, 2020 7:44 am 3. WHoops one more: (for any benders out there) if you do a search on the individual drives, and then delete files directly from within everything, will drive bender freak? (I don't know if drive bender has it's own DB of files, that could be stuffed by manipulating the component drives of a pool)
No deletions are done on the pool. Let's say P:/foo is a directory in a pool. There may be multiple directories across drives, say [Part 1]/foo, [Part 2]/foo. You see two instances of P:/foo in Everything. If you delete any one of P:/foo in Everything, both of [Part 1,2]/foo are deleted because Everything just delegates Windows Explorer to delete P:/foo. That's same as deleting P:/foo directly in Windows Explorer.
extratype
Posts: 10
Joined: Thu May 18, 2017 12:25 pm

Re: Build a USN Journal with Drive Bender Drive Pool

Post by extratype »

extratype wrote: Thu May 18, 2017 12:39 pm Entries may be duplicated as they reside in each disk.
I updated Everything 1.4.1.969 to 1.4.1.987. It does not show files in an EFU file list generated from a pooled disk. It only shows zero byte root directory. I guess this bug is linked to this change (https://www.voidtools.com/Changes.txt):
fixed an issue with db corruption from duplicated filenames.
There may be many entries (directories, or files when duplication feature enabled) of same path in a pooled drive.
extratype
Posts: 10
Joined: Thu May 18, 2017 12:25 pm

Re: Build a USN Journal with Drive Bender Drive Pool

Post by extratype »

extratype wrote: Fri Sep 18, 2020 9:42 am I updated Everything 1.4.1.969 to 1.4.1.987. It does not show files in an EFU file list generated from a pooled disk. It only shows zero byte root directory. I guess this bug is linked to this change (https://www.voidtools.com/Changes.txt):
It shows files as used to be in Everything 1.5.0.1315a. Thank you very much!
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