disParity

disParity » General Discussion

1. Cool1Net6
   Member

   About a month ago I stumbled across this application when trying to find out more information on FlexRAID. What intrigued me about it is that it works exactly like FlexRAID, but I could actually understand how it works and use it quite easily. Scanning this forum, I also discovered that a GUI was being requested, and Roland himself was unavailable for the job. Tada! I see a weekend project!

   After heavily coding for one weekend (hours on end), I was able to get a functioning prototype GUI that contained the three core functions (create, update, restore) and gave information on the drives status. Since then I updated the app to automate all of disParity's functions and a few optimizations here and there, and a month later (to the day) I want to present what I have developed so far.

   I call it the "DisParity Storage Manager". Although this is a working copy, it hasn't met my quality bar and I do not want to release it, however, here are a few screen shots of progress.

   http://i64.photobucket.com/albums/h176/StepForwarD/DSP_Main.png

   http://i64.photobucket.com/albums/h176/StepForwarD/DSP_Menu.png

   http://i64.photobucket.com/albums/h176/StepForwarD/DSP_Building.png

   http://i64.photobucket.com/albums/h176/StepForwarD/DSP_Finished.png

   http://i64.photobucket.com/albums/h176/StepForwarD/DSP_Remove.png

   http://i64.photobucket.com/albums/h176/StepForwarD/DSP_Broken.png

   Its going to take me a while to really perfect this application as work just got more intense and I have less time to focus my effort here, but if you like what you see or if anyone is even still interested in the development of a GUI, just reply to this thread. I will check on it every now and then.

   Thanks.

   -Cool-

   Posted 12 months ago #

2. klim
   Member

   hi, your gui looks great. it's interesting to see how different people have different ideas to create a gui for disparity. i didn't had enough time to do some work for the gui i'm working on.

   Posted 12 months ago #

3. Roland
   Key Master

   Looks really promising! I'm especially intrigued because you seem to be incorporating some of the same ideas I had back when I was thinking more about GUIs, namely the "Drive status window" showing size, free space, etc. of all the drives, and things like that.

   Anyway, keep up the great work! I look forward to trying it out.

   Posted 11 months ago #

4. Killroy
   Member

   I'm really looking forward to seeing this released so I can test it. The screen shots look great. Simple, elegant, yet functional.

   Posted 11 months ago #

5. GarenT
   Member

   +1 !!! Disparity is super easy to use, but I really like the GUI, super simple and straight forward, just like Disparity! I also like the drive status and capacity views. Great job Cool.

   Garen

   Posted 11 months ago #

6. evilx
   Member

   This looks like a great start. Any updates? Any plans to maybe incorporate it into a WHS Add-In? THAT would be super fly!

   Posted 10 months ago #

7. Cool1Net6
   Member

   Thank you all for your responses and interest in my program. I have even more motivation now to deliver a solid product.

   A short update on my progress. I have rewritten much of the code from scratch. It became difficult to track down regression errors in the main source code, so a modular design was developed. I also have become more ambitious and am planning to add a more detailed "working" window, extended options, and possibly a background monitoring service.

   However, since my posting I have had a very significant family event occur, large enough that it has prevented me from working on the DisParity Storage Manager for a majority of this time. To date, I still have not been fully capable of returning to this project, but I believe that with time I will be able to work more intently on it. I hope to have it finished late Q4 2009.

   As for a WHS Add-In, that is a possibility, but that is not scheduled for this upcoming release of DSM. My current focus is perfecting the core program functions and implementing the (planned) background monitoring service.

   Thanks.

   -Cool-

   Posted 10 months ago #

8. umax
   Member

   Any update on this? Im just about to jump on disparity or flexraid (still undecided)

   Posted 6 months ago #

9. Cool1Net6
   Member

   I dropped this project for a few months to focus on other tasks, and I ran into a bunch of stumbling blocks resulting in me trashing pretty much everything I had before. I recently got back on this project and it's nearing completion, so I want to share the redesigned teaser.

   http://i64.photobucket.com/albums/h176/StepForwarD/DSM_v03_teaser.png

   Still no ETA as to when it should be finished, but I am aiming for within a week, maybe longer if I decide to write a guide.

   -Cool-

   Posted 5 months ago #

10. Neostim
    Member

    Looking good!

    Posted 5 months ago #

11. klim
    Member

    i'm also very excited to test your gui.

    Posted 5 months ago #

12. Cool1Net6
    Member

    I've completed the first publicly released version! DisParity Storage Manager v0.3.2 BETA is ready for consumption. This version is still BETA software, and still may have a few bugs here and there. If you are having any issues using it or with features that do not work as intended, just post what is wrong here and I'll try my best to address the issue.

    http://student.fau.edu/pbryan/web/dsm/

    -Cool-

    Posted 5 months ago #

13. freehand
    Member

    Looks pretty cool!

    How exactly do you have two DisParity processes running at the same time? I agree that the bottle neck is the IO of the parity drive so I am all for being able to speed that up by writing to both parity drives at the same. I am just confused how you are doing that.

    Also wouldn't writing to both parity drives at the same time defeat the purpose of having 2 parity drives for extra protection? If the computer crashed you technically could corrupt both at the same time.... Maybe I read that wrong on your site.

    Sounds interesting tho!

    Posted 5 months ago #

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