FAQ

poolIt brings affordable storage virtualization to the desktop. It lets you consolidate your storage resources by combining multiple volumes into one and thus expand storage capacity dynamically.

poolIt is a storage virtualization software that combines multiple physical storage devices under a single namespace (a drive letter on Windows, or a volume name on Mac OS X). When browsing the pool, information from all storage resources is merged. Folder structures remain intact so all information can be found easily. Content from different drives, but stored using identical structures, will be presented to the user as if it all files were stored in a common location.

poolIt creates a thin virtual layer on top of your physical drives in order to help you:

• consolidate storage
• increase storage capacity with virtually no downtime
• optimize storage performance utilization
• repurpose storage resources by flushing content back into the remaining pool
• eliminate the risks traditionally associated with “very large” file systems
• better manage removable devices
• overcome 2TB limitations

DFS helps administrators group shared folders located on different servers and present them to users as a virtual tree of folders known as a namespace. The root of the volume therefore contains folders that represent the individual storage devices. Users do not benefit from a transparent access to a common pool. They are still exposed to the complexity of the underlying storage infrastructure and must decide where to store information.

poolIt is available for Windows and Mac OS X. Please refer to the Minimum System Requirements ??? for specific OS builds.

poolIt is fully transparent to the way the file system interacts with the operating system and doesn't alter any of the security settings the file system has had before adding it to the pool. You can also change the security settings of all data stored in the pool after you create and mount it.

No it doesn’t. Your drives must be formatted BEFORE poolIt can manage them.

No. You can use Tiger Technology cluStore for this purpose.

No. The performance of the individual drives doesn’t change. When you read or write to the pool, you are actually reading or writing to one of its pool members and the speed of the operation depends on the performance of this member only.

Virtually none. poolIt is a very thin layer that simply sparses the file systems.

Yes, after you remove it from the pool it is mounted and accessible from its original mount location.

All information contained on that volume will no longer be visible in the pool. However, it remains fully available on the drive.

No, data is actually stored on the pool members, so by deleting the pool you simply disband it and can access data from each individual member.

Yes, but the main reason for doing this would be to pre-load poolIt in order to prepare for future storage expansion.

No. Any given file must reside entirely on a single drive.

No, there’s no need to uninstall poolIt to upgrade it. You simply have to activate it with a license for poolIt Premium.

No, the pool and all settings are preserved after you upgrade to poolIt Premium.

As poolIt lets you add to the pool volumes that already contain data, it is possible ambiguity of file objects to occur i.e. files/folders with one and the same name to exist in exactly the same location on two or more member volumes. Although no data is lost after adding a volume to the pool, the operating system does not allow two or more files/folders with exactly the same name to coexist in the same location. To allow you to control how these files/folders are displayed and treated, poolIt provides you with ambiguous files display and handling options.

poolIt is designed to be fully hardware agnostic. As such, poolIt supports the leading vendors of storage technology.

No. There’s no need to reformat a volume in order to add it to a pool. Volumes that can be added to a pool must be formatted and can contain data.

No, the pool mounts as a local drive without the need to format it.

No, you can add volumes that contain data to the pool and it will remain visible in the pool.

No, the machines seeing the network shares continue to see them and can work with them.

Maintenance operations such as checking disks, defragmentation, etc. are performed on the individual volumes comprising the pool. If you need to continue working with the pool and the remaining members, instead of unmounting the pool, you can simply remove the member that you want to perform maintenance of and when finished add it again to the pool.

No, the pool size equals the sum of the sizes of all volumes added to it.

Yes. poolIt is technology agnostic. If the OS can mount a volume with Read & Write access, chances are poolIt will work with it. Note that poolIt doesn't allow you to add to the pool SAN volumes.

The OS must be able to mount the individual volumes with Read & Write access for poolIt to manage them. See the Examples of storage ???

No, poolIt requires drives to be R/W.

Yes, but just with poolIt Premium.

No, each volume can participate in just one pool at a time. If you add to a pool a volume that already participates in another pool, that volume is automatically removed from its initial pool.

With poolIt you can create a large pool that overcomes common limitations of the operating system for the volume sizes that can be mounted.

Yes.

Yes.

poolIt supports all RAID levels implemented in hardware.

Yes.

Tiger Technology provides End User support that can assist poolIt Premium customers by email. Please note that you will be requested to provide your poolIt Premium product key in order to validate your support eligibility. Users of the non licensed version of poolIt can obtain support from other users visiting the poolIt forum.

Minor versions primarily include bug fixes but can also integrate some new features, and improved functionality. You can tell if a software release is a minor one by looking at the version number. If the version number on the right side of the decimal point has changed, it's a minor version. For example, if version 1.0.5 is the current shipping release; the release of version 1.1 would be an example of a minor version. Minor versions are available for download to all customers directly from the poolIt web site.

You can tell if a software release is a major one by looking at the version number. If the version number on the left side of the decimal point has changed, it's a major version. For example, if version 1.0 is the current shipping release; the release of version 2.0 would be an example of a major version.