Windows Home Server

wonder_lander · 11 Jan 2009 at 23:57

tbh I find the HP very quiet. It's loud for about 20 secs on initial boot but then it's very good. As I say mine is in the garage so no issues with noise!

Skeeter · 12 Jan 2009 at 00:00

wonder_lander said:
tbh I find the HP very quiet. It's loud for about 20 secs on initial boot but then it's very good. As I say mine is in the garage so no issues with noise!

Is there not massive temperature changes in your garage?

wonder_lander · 12 Jan 2009 at 00:07

Sure enough when it's cold it's cold and when the weather improves it warms up. No worse than being in the house I guess?

With the machine running 24/7 it keeps it's own little micro climate going and I've ran a pc in there for a year also with no issues.

Tomsk · 12 Jan 2009 at 08:13

Skeeter said:
...an EEE Box, with external storage...

I have an eeeBox with a Drobo.
The eeBox is silent, the Drobo is not and it's volume can vary depending on what drives are installed. Also the eeeBox is limited to USB connection for external drives.

Skeeter · 12 Jan 2009 at 11:01

Tomsk said:
I have an eeeBox with a Drobo.
The eeBox is silent, the Drobo is not and it's volume can vary depending on what drives are installed. Also the eeeBox is limited to USB connection for external drives.

So is the Tranquil PC, but it will be used for backups and as a 24/7 PC, so I dont need uer awesome transfer speeds. It just needs to be cheap. Thinking I might reuse my old DS3 mobo with a low power CPU, slow speed CPU cooler, and simple case with single/double slow speed fans to cool HDDs. After all, its not like its goign to be doing anything major. Just need to make sure I get some quiet drives.

And convince my Mum to let me store it by the main PC downstairs, there isnt room in my room.

mattpc · 12 Jan 2009 at 12:25

Skeeter said:
First option is underkill, other option is overkill....

Dont expect the server to be very quiet though... I home you have a cupboard to hide it in.

Yeah I agree with your points. Even the PIII866 server is very very noisy by home computing standards. The solution is that what ever server I actually use it is going be living in the loft as I couldn't stand that sort of noise in any room of the house.

The second option probably is over kill but for the money why not tbh?

wonder_lander · 12 Jan 2009 at 12:45

PhillyDee said:
Very good! Best addon by miles I think. Cheers!
Avast! Home server edition is £30 for 1 year, £42 for 2 years if anyione needs one. No idea how that compares to others. I use Avast on all my PC's (+ friends and family) so Ive purchased a years worth.

That addon allows wireframes to be drawn and disks attatched to it Very handy for me since I have disks horizontal and vertical in hot-swap bays. I think im in love! Microsoft should have offered exactly that from the start!

Seems like the prices on this have fallen:

avast! WHS Edition
Licenses 1 Year 2 Years 3 Years
1 - 1 £ 24.95 £ 35.90 £ 45.76

http://www.avast.com/eng/pricelist-windows-home-server-gbp.html

wonder_lander · 12 Jan 2009 at 14:34

Anyone got a recommendation for a WHS supported UPS?

HEADRAT · 12 Jan 2009 at 14:40

Just bought another 1.5TB drive, should take me close to 6TB of storage.

PhillyDee · 12 Jan 2009 at 16:06

wonder_lander said:
Seems like the prices on this have fallen:

+tax brings it to £29.67 or thereabouts . . . . .

Skeeter · 12 Jan 2009 at 16:36

wonder_lander said:
Anyone got a recommendation for a WHS supported UPS?

Any UPS that works with Server 2003, seen as this is basically all WHS is. Is it really nessisary tho? unless your going to stick a UPS on every other device to form your network, in case of a power outage, theres no point in your WHS being on all on its own with everything else around it off. Just going to set mine to restart on return of power.

Col_M · 12 Jan 2009 at 16:53

Supertaff said:
Anyone know what happens when the end of the 120 day evaluation version comes around?

Does it just ask you for the full key if you buy one, or do you have to go through a full rebuild?

I was just thinking as I'm setting all of this up now and don't want to have to do it again if after the time period if I'm happy to stay with it

Cheers

Taff

I went from a 30 day free trial to one of the 120 day free trials

you have to pop in the new disk and do a re-install of the OS. All your shares are untouched but you lose all your installed applications and any users that you had. The apps that you had installed will still be in the "Software" shared folder though.

Re-installing the add-in apps and setting up your users doesn't take long anyway. If you had any download software installed to you'll have to install and set that up again too.

Valo · 12 Jan 2009 at 17:10

I would really like to make the move to WHS as I think it'll make the most of my hardware, but I'd like some advice:

My current setup is:

Intel C2D E4500
ASUS P5K-VM Motherboard 4x SATA
2GB DDR2 RAM

80GB Seagate SATA ST380815AS (System Disk) - Connected to Motherboard
500GB Samsung SATA HD501LJ (Storage Disk) - Connected to Motherboard
4x 500GB Samsung SATA HD501LJ In RAID 5 on a HighPoint RocketRAID 2310 4 Port SATA PCI-e Controller Card (Redundant Storage: Music, Photos & Video)

Akasa Mirage Case - Room for 6x Internal Hard Disks (All Full)
400w Enermax Liberty PSU (All PSU Power Leads Used)

What I want to figure out would be:

The best way to implement WHS using current internal disks - don't mind ditching RAID 5
An easy way to install more disks
A good PSU with plenty of SATA/Hard Disk power connecters

Any advice/suggestions would be great!

wonder_lander · 12 Jan 2009 at 17:46

Skeeter said:
Any UPS that works with Server 2003, seen as this is basically all WHS is. Is it really nessisary tho? unless your going to stick a UPS on every other device to form your network, in case of a power outage, theres no point in your WHS being on all on its own with everything else around it off. Just going to set mine to restart on return of power.

Was looking for personal recommendations really. The idea about the UPS is to carry out a safe shutdown in the event of a power failure, not to keep the systems running!

HEADRAT · 12 Jan 2009 at 17:48

I'd be interested in that, nothing too expensive though

Zico · 12 Jan 2009 at 18:08

Valo said:
Any advice/suggestions would be great!

First off all data on the HDDs will need to be moved/backed up onto other media/HDD before installing WHS as it will format the disks.

The only change to the above setup would be to use the loan 500GB storage drive as the system drive for WHS (automatically setup for system install and landing zone for WHS). The 80GB drive is not large enough for the way WHS works so you could use that as another storage drive in WHS or in your next pc.

Valo · 12 Jan 2009 at 20:16

Zico said:
First off all data on the HDDs will need to be moved/backed up onto other media/HDD before installing WHS as it will format the disks.

The only change to the above setup would be to use the loan 500GB storage drive as the system drive for WHS (automatically setup for system install and landing zone for WHS). The 80GB drive is not large enough for the way WHS works so you could use that as another storage drive in WHS or in your next pc.

Thanks for the help! So I'll replace the 80GB internal drive with a larger drive of some sort for the system disk. I was planning of backing up all the data off all the drives anyway due to the install/configure process for WHS.

What about the actual RAID 5 array, I know that WHS isn't a fan of RAID as makes drive pooling difficult since I'm backing up all my data to an external drive I can destroy the RAID 5 array and just use the controller card to run the disks as JBOD - worthwhile or not?

What about my dilemma of powering and easily installing more disks to expand my storage?

chimaera · 12 Jan 2009 at 20:49

I could do with some WHS advice...

I've got an old s754 system using WHS, however it seems to be locked into a 30 minute reboot cycle, i've had problems when the power supply has been shut down with the machine still on, 3 times out of 3 it's corrupted the OS - would that be a hardware or software cause?

I've got the 120 day license which i installed in May last year

i think because i had to call up so many times for a new license key after OS corruption that someones accidentally given me a full retail key

Is it worth me buying a proper version in the hope that it will be a bit more stable or should i also put a new machine together (fancy a cheap C2D box).

Any advice?

HEADRAT · 12 Jan 2009 at 20:53

Valo said:
What about my dilemma of powering and easily installing more disks to expand my storage?

Dependant on how many drives you need you will obviously need to check your PSU requirements, most modern PSU will be able to power loads of discs, you'll probably run out of SATA ports before you run out of power.

If you wanted to make things really easy you could use something like the ICYDOCK enclosures:-

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HD-017-BT

really nice kit, I had some a while back but just thought they were overkill TBH, you don't really change drives that often.

I would just get the largest drives you can get hold of, 1/1.5TB drives are pretty cheap now.

chimaera said:
i've had problems when the power supply has been shut down with the machine still on, 3 times out of 3 it's corrupted the OS - would that be a hardware or software cause?

I've had a couple of powercuts and my WHS is come back up no problem, sounds a bit fishy.

theheyes · 12 Jan 2009 at 22:23

Do you guys all have wired networks? I'm looking into WHS but 802.11g isn't really going to cut it. I'm thinking of going the ethernet over powerline route but just wondered what everyone else was using.