Do We Need Another Drive Extender? A First Look at PoolHD from Anvil AG

A new Drive Extender offering is on the market.  PoolHD from Anvil AG http://poolhd.com/ is making a run at the expandable storage market with PoolHD and a promise that it will be simple, fast and infinite.  The first version was released June 18, 2013.  With a starting price of $12.95USD and a Windows Home Server 2011 / Windows Server 2012 Addin scheduled to release on June 26, 2013, the offering looks interesting.

I am using a Window 7 VM with 2GB of RAM on top of Microsoft Windows Server 2012 Standard w Hyper-V role.  The VM has a 60GB OS Drive with 4 x 50GB Data Drives.  Disk 1 and 2 are VHDx Dynamic and Disk 3 and 4 are VHDx Fixed.  Downloaded the 30 day trial.

It’s a very simple install. With few install options, I select all the defaults. It goes very quick.

Click on any of the images for a larger view.

After a reboot,

Drives E/F – Dynamic VHDx 50GB Drives
Drives G/H – Fixed VHDx 50GB Drives

An ATTO of the OS Drive C for a benchmark.

Dynamic VHDx 50GB Drives with no data.

Fixed VHDx 50GB Drives with no data

Creating a New Storage Pool

First Drive E Added.  New Pooled Drive I Created

Second Drive F Added

Both Drives Now in the Pool.  Drive options available for the drive.

Drives G and H Pooled to Drive J

Drive Performance with Drives E and F Pooled to Drive I	Drive Performance with Drives G and H Pooled to Drive J

Transferring Data from Local Drives to Pooled Drive I (Click to see larger version).  The data moved was 12.6 GB of mostly mp3 and mp4 files that are 50 – 300MB in size. Copied the same 12.6GB Folder from 3 Devices.

From the Drobo FS	From the Drobo 5N
From the WHS 2011	Completed Transfer

With the data loaded on the drives, the used space on drive I is 38GB split between E and F with 19GB each. 

Turning on Duplication across the two drives

Now Removing

Will keep looking at it.  Lots that can be done here.  Leave your comments below.