Drive Pools

[CABS]

My Games folder is located on Drive F, which is a drive pool consisting of 2 SSD's set up and managed by Drive Bender. My Staging Folder is located on the same drive. Since this is a drive pool does that mean I cannot use the Hard Links deployment method? With 100+ mods the Move Deployment method is unacceptably slow taking over 4 hours to complete every time I add a new mod or make a change.

 

Help!

[HadToRegister]

Hmmm, I just quickly read the "Drive Bender" page on what it actually does, and I'm going to guess that it's a "No", because it sounds like Drive Bender make a virtual RAID system that allows you to remove/add drives to the RAID on the fly?

Either way, I'm thinking Virtual Hardlinks/Junctions are going to have a hard time getting along with what a "Drive Pool", Drive Bender" is capable of.

However, I could be really wrong, as I have to confess this is the first I've heard of this, but it sounds pretty awesome.

Hopefully Tannin42 will stop by and give you a useful answer to this.

[Tannin42]

Hmm, that's a really interesting question, unfortunately I'm not familiar with that software.

I guess it would depend on whether they implement hard links in their virtual file system.

 

But considering move deployment doesn't bode well...

 

Can you even select hardlink deployment in Settings->Mods? When you do, what happens? Are you getting error messages?

[CABS]

No, 'Move Deployment' is the only option available.

 

Drive Bender was originally developed for Windows Home Server 2011. The original WHS had Drive Extender built-in. When Microsoft released WHS 2011 it dropped Drive Extender pushing users to use hardware based Raid for their storage drives. Today I would venture to guess that most new sales of DB are for desktop systems. At its root it is a flexible software based Raid that makes it very easy to expand your game drive, data drive, etc., by just adding a new drive to the pool.

 

On my system I installed a 500G NVME M.2 drive for my boot drive C. That freed up a 500G SSD which I used along with a 1TB SSD to form a drive pool for Games. I also have a pool of Hard drives used to store my user files (documents, downloads, etc.). This allows me to expand each drive (pool) 'as needed' without having to "Replace" the drives with more expensive (budget busting) big 2TB or bigger SSD's.

 

Move Deployment would be acceptable if it would simply add the changes (add a new mod) and not redeploy all 100l+ mods that I have for Skyrim SE. I also have the original Skyrim installed with over 250 mods which I can't even think about moving to Vortex. I have read your vision for the future of Vortex and I definitely want to use it, but if I have to replace my drives with budget busting BIG single drives (2TB or bigger SSD's) that is a major problem for me.

 

Hoping for a better solution.....

[HadToRegister]

No, 'Move Deployment' is the only option available.

 

Drive Bender was originally developed for Windows Home Server 2011. The original WHS had Drive Extender built-in. When Microsoft released WHS 2011 it dropped Drive Extender pushing users to use hardware based Raid for their storage drives. Today I would venture to guess that most new sales of DB are for desktop systems. At its root it is a flexible software based Raid that makes it very easy to expand your game drive, data drive, etc., by just adding a new drive to the pool.

 

On my system I installed a 500G NVME M.2 drive for my boot drive C. That freed up a 500G SSD which I used along with a 1TB SSD to form a drive pool for Games. I also have a pool of Hard drives used to store my user files (documents, downloads, etc.). This allows me to expand each drive (pool) 'as needed' without having to "Replace" the drives with more expensive (budget busting) big 2TB or bigger SSD's.

 

Move Deployment would be acceptable if it would simply add the changes (add a new mod) and not redeploy all 100l+ mods that I have for Skyrim SE. I also have the original Skyrim installed with over 250 mods which I can't even think about moving to Vortex. I have read your vision for the future of Vortex and I definitely want to use it, but if I have to replace my drives with budget busting BIG single drives (2TB or bigger SSD's) that is a major problem for me.

 

Hoping for a better solution.....

 

 

Well, if you weren't using Drive Pools, you'd have Symlink, and Hardlink Deployment available as well.

I use 275 mods in Fallout 4 and Deployment doesn't take long at all, maybe a few seconds tops.

[CABS]

Right now I need the space so eliminating the Drive Pool is not an option. I also really believe that drive pooling is going to become much more common in the future as evidenced by the addition of Drive Spaces in Win 10 by Microsoft. Think about it..... We started out with floppies replaced by hard drives that are being replaced by SSD's. Next thing up is NVME M.2 drives. You can bet that future motherboards will include multiple slots for NVME drives. That makes drive pooling even more appealing.

 

That raises my next question, will Microsoft Drive Spaces in Windows 10 support Hard Links? That could be the answer to my problem.

 

Given the direction that Microsoft appears to be going, I really believe that this is important to the future development of Vortex.

[HadToRegister]

Right now I need the space so eliminating the Drive Pool is not an option. I also really believe that drive pooling is going to become much more common in the future as evidenced by the addition of Drive Spaces in Win 10 by Microsoft. Think about it..... We started out with floppies replaced by hard drives that are being replaced by SSD's. Next thing up is NVME M.2 drives. You can bet that future motherboards will include multiple slots for NVME drives. That makes drive pooling even more appealing.

 

That raises my next question, will Microsoft Drive Spaces in Windows 10 support Hard Links? That could be the answer to my problem.

 

Given the direction that Microsoft appears to be going, I really believe that this is important to the future development of Vortex.

 

So THAT's what that M.2 slot is on my Motherboard.

 

 

 

[CABS]

You're joking, Right?? If you are not using the M.2 slot on your MB for your boot drive you Seriously do not know what your are missing :) The increase in speed of your boot drive is a Major increase in your system's performance. I wish I had All M.2 slots on my MB, with the possible exception of my video card.

 

Back to my question, will MS Drive Spaces handle Hard Links?? If so, I will drop Drive Bender in a second.

[Tannin42]

Unfortunately I can't answer that either.

 

You could try this extension: https://www.nexusmods.com/site/mods/37?tab=files

which implements a deployment method based on the same virtual file system tech that MO uses but it's not particularly well developed or tested. It shouldn't cause any damage but it may just not work.

It's also only compatible with Vortex 0.17 atm, no 0.18 (current testing releases) support

[CABS]

Thanks Tannin, I'll give it a go. I assume I will need to purge the current mods first, then install and redeploy. Will let you know how it works out.