Drive Balancer App now available...

Latest version - 1.06

I've finally gotten enough time to finish this app I've been working on for about a week now. If you'd like to balance the data distribution on your pooled drives, this tool is for you. Here's a cut/paste of the readme.txt:

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UPDATED NOTE:
Some people have been having trouble not getting any data to move when their D:\ has lots of data on it. Before doing
anything else, please run Drive Balancer to clear the landing zone only. To do this, choose "n" to include d:, then
choose "y" to clear landing zone, and the "5" to exit. After this initial run (which can take hours), rerun Drive
Balancer the with the options you want. I believe this will help the problem of no data being moved on some people's
systems.

Usage Notes:
This program was designed to "even out" the data on a drive pool for WHS. The main purpose was when a person adds a drive to the pool, it doesn't necessarily start getting used for a while. While Microsoft has made changes to the usage of the Landing Zone (as in it doesn't exist anymore), some people's systems might still be in a non "evened out" state as wish to correct this. On my own system, I routinely get within 2% of perfect balancing on all pooled drives.

Usage Notes:
This program was designed to "even out" the data on a drive pool for WHS. The main purpose was when a person adds a drive to the pool, it doesn't necessarily start getting used for a while. While Microsoft has made changes to the usage of the Landing Zone (as in it doesn't exist anymore), some people's systems might still be in a non "evened out" state as wish to correct this. On my own system, I routinely get within 2% of perfect balancing on all pooled drives.

For a walk through of the tool running, checkout the walk_through.txt file.
Testing:
I have tested this program on my own system which consists of:

System Disk:
Western Digital Raptor 10kRPM 160GB (140/20)

Pooled Disks:
(3) WD 1TB Green HDs
(3) Seagate 1.5TB HDs

IMPORTANT NOTE:
With some help from user "S_M_E" on SageTV forums, I am able to "restart" the Drive Extender service
which is responsible for doing the actual balancing. The program detects a restart is needed if <5MB/s of
total disk throughput is monitored on all pooled drives. Monitoring disk activity would not have been
possible within Sam Wood's help. At this point, it restarts the service and marches along. Feel free to
restart the service on your own if you are watching the process and see no disk activity (using Disk
Management plug-in).

You WILL see some critical WHS warnings reported all related to storage space. Do not worry, this is expected behavior while the tool is running and will be cleared up at the end of the run.

If you need to hit Ctrl-C out of the program even though it is automatic and will end on it own. If you feel the program is behaving badly, and you Ctrl-C out of it, You will have to manually delete the following DIRs:

C:\fs\*\fake\
D:\fake\

I have extensively tested this program on my own system with my own data. I have lost nothing and you should realize that this program does not delete any data (It only creates fake files). As such, I can't guarantee that any data on your own system. Don't be afraid, either do a backup first, or jsut trust me and run the tool anyway!

Acknowledgements:
Theo van Elsberg - author of LZReallocator
Brent from wegotserved WHS forums
S_M_E from SageTV forums
Sam Wood - author of Disk Management Add-In

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Revision History:
v1.06
- Now supports 100 Drives (Arbitrary number) instead of 26
- Changed "Landing Zone" verbage to "D:"
- Fixed Cleanup procedures so hopefully always cleans up afer itself
- Added minor support for "X-Files" version of WHS - did range checking on C/D sizes
- Completely rewrote D: clearing algorithm to be based on disk throughput (better results)
- Got rid of extra verbage no longer needed when it's "Crunch Time"

v1.05
- Attempting to solve problem where no files are moved on the system when D:\is filled
prior to running Drive Balancer. Please read UPDATE NOTE for potential solution
- Fixed bug where calculation of free space on D: was not "worked around". Refer to v1.03
history notes below. This fix will help systems that either
a) don't include D:\ in balancing
tried to clear the landing zone
- Added programmable time interval for checking disk activity
- Added programmable disk activity threshold for restarting Drive Extender service

v1.04
- Fixed bug where D: was not always cleaned up
- Modified restarting of DE service to monitor disk activity. This will restart DE within
seconds instead of 15 minutes. Should improve run time on systems with large files.

v1.03
- Handled bug where WHS returns free space of D: as (C: + D:)
- Fine tuned "crunching" algorithm so balancing should be better on different sized HDDs
- Added exception handling around creation of fake directories and fake files

v1.02
- Added option to allow D: to be part of balancing.
- Fixed bug where restarting DE would not occur and forward progress would likely not occur.

v1.01
- Fixed bug with option #2 and a drive was large enough to contain an equal amount of data.
- Added option for entering in your own data
- Added "quit" option in case all you wanted to do was clear the landing zone