System drive for WHS = Largest Disk?!?

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BurntToast

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Does anyone follow the rule of having your system disk the largest disk installed on the server?

So even if you could install the OS on a 150GB drive, it is still recommended to install it on a 500-1tb drive because it will be partitioned and the D: drive will be used for backups? If so, what type of backups will the D: drive use?

I'm looking to install WHS on an old 150GB raptor drive. Tell me why this is a bad idea.
 
When you copy files to your WHS from another computer, they are landed on the primary (system) drive first.

Then they are slowly migrated out to the other drives in the storage pool.

If you only have a 150GB primary drive, then if you want to transer a lot of big files to WHS at once, you will have to be prepared to wait a long time, and you may have fails etc, becaue file transfer will have to pause to wait for WHS to move the files off the primary disk onto the secondary disks. This is known as the migrator.

That is the reason why WHS reccomends installing the biggest drive as the primary.

There is absoultely no reason to use a Raptor on a WHS.
 
Use the largest drive you have. While WHS no longer has the "landing" issue, the real issue with using the larger disk is when you scale up in the future. Typically a user wants to replace the smallest disk, so installing the largest one as your system drive saves you time from reinstallation in the future when you want to upgrade the system drive.
 
So, I'm in this exact situation...

I just found out that I'm going to be *forced* to do a re-install to go from the 120 day Trial to the "real thing". I'm currently running dual 500 gig drives.

I understand that the re-install should go perfectly well without loosing anything except for things that I installed on the C:\ drive, and some WHS settings (add-ins, user accounts)...However, I'm considering replacing the primary drive with a 1 TB "Green" drive at the same time to avoid having to do *another* re-install later.

So, is there anything I can do to make the upgrade go smoothly, or am I completely hosed?

Thanks.
-Kevin
 
serverguy said:
When you copy files to your WHS from another computer, they are landed on the primary (system) drive first.

Then they are slowly migrated out to the other drives in the storage pool.

If you only have a 150GB primary drive, then if you want to transer a lot of big files to WHS at once, you will have to be prepared to wait a long time, and you may have fails etc, becaue file transfer will have to pause to wait for WHS to move the files off the primary disk onto the secondary disks. This is known as the migrator.

That is the reason why WHS reccomends installing the biggest drive as the primary.

There is absoultely no reason to use a Raptor on a WHS.
Click to expand...

No longer the case with Power Pack 1. If you network drop something into the shared storage pool it will go straight to whatever drive WHS wants to use, not the system disk first.

Main reason for large drive is to not have to upgrade -- and to have larger storage. If you had 4x sata ports that were 4x500 and 1 IDE drive that was 80gig, i would use the 80 gig for OS and keep the 4x sata in the pool. This would let you upgrade storage without touching the OS.
 
There is absoultely no reason to use a Raptor on a WHS.
Click to expand...

Unless you're like me and have those sitting around as spare drives. ;)


.However, I'm considering replacing the primary drive with a 1 TB "Green" drive at the same time to avoid having to do *another* re-install later.
Click to expand...

I've been playing heavily (removing/adding different size drives---creating disaster scenarios) with WHS for @ 2 weeks. The "biggest" drive theory for the "C" partition is all well and good, except mine doesn't keep anything but the OS. It seems if you have enough space to hold everything on other drives, the space beyond the 60GB "C" partition will stay empty.

I have 4 drives (2 X 500GB, 1 X 350GB, 1 X 1TB) with the OS on the 250GB drive. WHS "balances" the shares between the 500gigger (96% full!) and the 1TB (50%full). The other 500GB drive and the 350GB drive hold no shares and the 500gigger is empty. I dunno about you, but leaving a 500gigger completely out of the pool while using 96% of another, doesn't strike me as balanced.

I have a feeling that if you install that 1TB unit as "C", 92% will stay empty.

I'm really liking WHS but it's definately a work in progress.

Let me put it another way, with all the file erors I've been getting when removing and adding drives and other quirks as described above, there's no way I would rely on this for my only back-up.
 
KevinG said:
So, I'm in this exact situation...

I just found out that I'm going to be *forced* to do a re-install to go from the 120 day Trial to the "real thing". I'm currently running dual 500 gig drives.

I understand that the re-install should go perfectly well without loosing anything except for things that I installed on the C:\ drive, and some WHS settings (add-ins, user accounts)...However, I'm considering replacing the primary drive with a 1 TB "Green" drive at the same time to avoid having to do *another* re-install later.

So, is there anything I can do to make the upgrade go smoothly, or am I completely hosed?

Thanks.
-Kevin
Click to expand...


Turn duplication on for everything
Wait for it to complete copying everything.
Pull the system drive only.
Install the new Drive
Do a Server Reinstallation it will recognize your other drive.
Then install whatever else drives you have laying around.
 
Does WHS still check for available space using the size of the system drive? It seemed to do that when I was playing around with the evaluation version on a 200gb system drive. That may have been pre-PP1 though. If so, you could never copy a folder or set of files >150gb, if you used the 150gb as the OS drive.
 
Thanks...At least it is possible...

Now, however, I'm wondering if I would just be better off adding the 1 TB drive to the pool and ignore the fact that my primary volume is "only" 500 Gigs...

It was just as much about about saving power over the long haul, as it was about future expansion...
 
I'm wondering if I would just be better off adding the 1 TB drive to the pool and ignore the fact that my primary volume is "only" 500 Gigs...
Click to expand...

That's what I'd be doing.

I wish the OS could fit on one of these 72GB Raptors I have sitting around.
 
ghostee said:
Does WHS still check for available space using the size of the system drive? It seemed to do that when I was playing around with the evaluation version on a 200gb system drive. That may have been pre-PP1 though. If so, you could never copy a folder or set of files >150gb, if you used the 150gb as the OS drive.
Click to expand...

It never did. It's a client OS issue.
 
another issue with having a small primary drive is that vista checks the free space of a drive before a transfer and it only sees the D: Drives size even when there is like 3 TB free it only sees the primary drive....

So when i transfered 2TB of movies i ad to do it in 200gb sections, since i too was dumb and installed on a 250gb and then added 4x750gb drives.

I too will be changing this setup when i have more time ( i will buy a 1 TB WD Black for primary drive) and have the 4x750gb GP drives for storage.
 
A month ago (post PP1) my WHS box was full with 9 drives reporting 96-98% full including the pool portion of the OS drive which is a 500gb drive. I added a 1tb drive to the pool, allowed the box to balance overnight (or so I thought), and went to copy recorded TV shows that had accumulated on a client PC - about 50gb worth. (A couple weeks delay after a crappily packaged drive from Newegg was DOA.)

In real terms the 500gb drive had 17gb free, and the 1gb drive in the pool was as yet unused (even after more than 24 hours at idle where I expected it would balance some things). I tried copying the whole 50gb lot at once and it wouldn't do it. I had to split it up into less than 17gb chunks to transfer it.

I don't believe the post PP1 talk about it not using the OS drive's pool portion as a landing zone or buffer.

Edit: I see Addias's post above me, the client was a Vista machine. Good gawd MS, get with it.
 
Old Hippie said:
That's what I'd be doing.

I wish the OS could fit on one of these 72GB Raptors I have sitting around.
Click to expand...

You Can.....I did it on mine when I first built it!;)

ghostee said:
Does WHS still check for available space using the size of the system drive? It seemed to do that when I was playing around with the evaluation version on a 200gb system drive. That may have been pre-PP1 though. If so, you could never copy a folder or set of files >150gb, if you used the 150gb as the OS drive.
Click to expand...

MrMike said:
It never did. It's a client OS issue.
Click to expand...

Adidas4275 said:
another issue with having a small primary drive is that vista checks the free space of a drive before a transfer and it only sees the D: Drives size even when there is like 3 TB free it only sees the primary drive....

So when i transfered 2TB of movies i ad to do it in 200gb sections, since i too was dumb and installed on a 250gb and then added 4x750gb drives.

I too will be changing this setup when i have more time ( i will buy a 1 TB WD Black for primary drive) and have the 4x750gb GP drives for storage.
Click to expand...

[LYL]Homer;1033475291 said:
A month ago (post PP1) my WHS box was full with 9 drives reporting 96-98% full including the pool portion of the OS drive which is a 500gb drive. I added a 1gb drive to the pool, allowed the box to balance overnight (or so I thought), and went to copy recorded TV shows that had accumulated on a client PC - about 50gb worth. (A couple weeks delay after a crappily packaged drive from Newegg was DOA.)

In real terms the 500gb drive had 17gb free, and the 1gb drive in the pool was as yet unused (even after more than 24 hours at idle where I expected it would balance some things). I tried copying the whole 50gb lot at once and it wouldn't do it. I had to split it up into less than 17gb chunks to transfer it.

I don't believe the post PP1 talk about it not using the OS drive's pool portion as a landing zone or buffer.

Edit: I see Addias's post above me, the client was a Vista machine. Good gawd MS, get with it.
Click to expand...


That issue is fixed for even Vista Machines.

It was included in patch KB 957825

This update improves the interaction between home computers that are running Windows Vista and a Windows Home Server-based system when you copy files or folders to a shared folder. Other storage-related improvements are included to address specific issues that are listed in the “More Information” section. Additionally, this update resolves certain issues that may occur when you restore files and folders from Windows Home Server. The update also improves the search functionality when you use remote access.

Shared Folders and Server Storage

Issue 1

Before this update is installed, the ability to copy large files or folders from a home computer that is running Windows Vista to a shared folder on the home server is limited by the free space on the primary hard disk drive of the Windows Home Server-based system. After this update is installed, the file size is limited to the free space on the target hard disk drives that are connected to the home server.

Issue 2

Sometimes, Windows Home Server generates lots of notification messages about the files that are stored in shared folders. These notifications may cause high CPU utilization on the home server for applications that are accessing these files. This behavior causes slow performance on the home server. After this update is installed, applications such as the Microsoft Zune software, that may be running at the same time, no longer consume excessive processor resources.

Issue 3

Under certain conditions, Windows Home Server disables duplication on shared folders after a new user account is created. After this update is installed, creation of user accounts no longer affects the status of shared folder duplication.​

Home Computer Backup

When you restore files and folders from a Home Computer Backup, the Home Computer Backup process may stop when it is 79 percent complete. This update provides new functionality to help prevent this issue.​

Home Server Backup

Some issues may occur when you restore files and folders from a Home Server Backup on an external hard disk drive to the software shared folder on a Windows Home Server-based system. This update adds functionality to prevent the unintended restoration of older versions of the Windows Home Server Connector software from overwriting newer versions of the files.​

Remote Access

When you use the search functionality on the Remote Access Shared Folders tab to perform a search that includes accented characters, such as ã or ó, you may receive the following Web page error:
Windows Home Server Remote Access has encountered an error.
This update lets you use accented characters with the Remote Access search.​

How to obtain this update

If the Automatic Updates feature is enabled on your home server, the update will be downloaded automatically to your Windows Home Server-based system through Windows Update. Or, in the Windows Home Server Console, you can click Update Now on the General page of your home server Settings page.​

Prerequisites

To apply this update, you must have the latest version of Windows Home Server Connector installed on the home computer.​

Preinstallation requirement

Before you install this update, make sure that you are not running home computer backup.
​
Restart requirement

After you apply this update, you do not have to restart the computer.
Update replacement information
This update does not replace any other previously released updates.​
Click to expand...
 
you know i did see that my mapped drives showed different free space, but the free space bar still shows full...

yeah that update was a good fix....
 
nitrobass24 said:
You Can.....I did it on mine when I first built it!;)
Click to expand...

Thanks for the info NitroBass! (Big Thumbs-Up)

I didn't even try to install it there because the smallest OS drive was supposed to be 80GB.

I'll drag out a Raptor and give it a try!

Hopefully I won't get too many errors this time!
 
As I am building my WHS currently and was hoping to have 20 drives and one OS drive, would this be wrong to do this? The Norco case allows for a single drive above the hot swap bays, and was going to use that for my OS drive. Is there a way to tell WHS to not use that drive in the pool, will this hurt the system?

My thoughts were similar to building a normal desktop, having the main OS on a separate drive so if anything happens to WHS, I Just need to replace a single drive in the system.
 
theDreamer said:
As I am building my WHS currently and was hoping to have 20 drives and one OS drive, would this be wrong to do this? The Norco case allows for a single drive above the hot swap bays, and was going to use that for my OS drive. Is there a way to tell WHS to not use that drive in the pool, will this hurt the system?

My thoughts were similar to building a normal desktop, having the main OS on a separate drive so if anything happens to WHS, I Just need to replace a single drive in the system.
Click to expand...

This is how pretty much all of us with the norco cases do it.
 
Ockie said:
This is how pretty much all of us with the norco cases do it.
Click to expand...

Sounds good then, was hoping so, but since this will be my first run with WHS I am a bit unsure of things still. Only a few weeks until all my stuff arrives and away I go. :D

Ockie, how much storage are you at now if I can ask?
 
WHS is definately nice, hopefully more developers come up with new addins---- the new widget WHS addin is cool, i want/need crashplan WHS plugin. I use crashplan on my WHS now but it would be nice if it was intigrated into my console for convinience
 
Thanks for the info nitro. When I moved from evaluation to retail, I switched to using a 1 TB drive for the system, so I wouldn't have noticed this fix. Still going to make sure it's applied when I get home tonight though.
 
Adidas4275 said:
WHS is definately nice, hopefully more developers come up with new addins---- the new widget WHS addin is cool, i want/need crashplan WHS plugin. I use crashplan on my WHS now but it would be nice if it was intigrated into my console for convinience
Click to expand...

you could just use the Tab creator addin.
 
yeah but the web access still needs a password and such, it would be nice to not have to enter more than one password to access all the servers software..... but yeah that would work. I havent really used tab creator
 
Hi guys,

great forums, a lot of useful information. i have been through a few forums, looking for an answer to a query i have - and have found a multitude of different answers. my current situation is:

1 x 80gb SATA drive (system)
2 x 500gb SATA
1 x 750gb SATA
1 x 320gb IDE
1 x DVDROM IDE

I was given a new 1tb SATA and am in a quandry on where this should go. my Motherboard only has 4 SATA ports, so without purching any further equipment one of the SATA drives has to go. My first instinct wsas to just remove a 500gb and use it some where else and eventually replace the other drives with 1 or 1.5tb as time goes (i still have 400gb of free space).

then i saw information saying to replace the 80gb system drive with the 1tb, but then other people say that the system drive won't hold storage. at the moment i am wondering whether to gracefully remove the 320 IDE, yank out the system drive, insert the 320 IDE and recreate system. then when that is all done - add the 1tb. i have replaced a faulty system drive before (another 80gb) and it went smoothly but i like to keep rebuilds on the whs to a minimum to lower the risk factor. my past IT experience has led me to use a small drive for O/S and keep data separate, so easy to upgrade and replace and keep apart... any thoughts would be greatly appreciated and sorry fofr the novel..!!!
 
nitrobass24 said:
You Can.....I did it on mine when I first built it!;)

That issue is fixed for even Vista Machines.

It was included in patch KB 957825
Click to expand...

I had a similar issue to their situations this weekend. I added 2x1TB drives to my server. WHS showed the following utilization pattern after bootup:

System: 97% (500GB)
Drive1: 95% (500GB)
Drive2: 95% (1TB)
Drive3: 92% (1TB)
Drive4: 0% (1TB)
Drive5: 0% (1TB)

I assumed the load would be rebalanced overnight, and this wasn't the case. I have PP1 and KB957825 installed, and there was no DE activity even after multiple reboots and toggling duplication for my largest folders. I was still unable to move files larger than about 15GB at a time. The solution was to run this script to migrate data off the primary data partition to the new drives. I am now able to copy over large folders without issues, and my system drive utilization is low again (30%). I let the script run for about 4 hours total.

I don't think the issue is fixed at all, vista still seems to see only the primary data partition on the system drive when checking for free space.

As a side note, I think this situation is avoidable by not having such a high utilization of the system drive in the first place. I should've expanded my storage earlier instead of pouring data into my storage pool until the system drive was nearly full.
 
-=Antimatter=- said:
I had a similar issue to their situations this weekend. I added 2x1TB drives to my server. WHS showed the following utilization pattern after bootup:

System: 97% (500GB)
Drive1: 95% (500GB)
Drive2: 95% (1TB)
Drive3: 92% (1TB)
Drive4: 0% (1TB)
Drive5: 0% (1TB)

I assumed the load would be rebalanced overnight, and this wasn't the case. I have PP1 and KB957825 installed, and there was no DE activity even after multiple reboots and toggling duplication for my largest folders. I was still unable to move files larger than about 15GB at a time. The solution was to run this script to migrate data off the primary data partition to the new drives. I am now able to copy over large folders without issues, and my system drive utilization is low again (30%). I let the script run for about 4 hours total.

I don't think the issue is fixed at all, vista still seems to see only the primary data partition on the system drive when checking for free space.

As a side note, I think this situation is avoidable by not having such a high utilization of the system drive in the first place. I should've expanded my storage earlier instead of pouring data into my storage pool until the system drive was nearly full.
Click to expand...

wow thats actually surprising that it does not seem to work.

Can I see a screenshot of your D: drive (data) property sheet from the server?
 
nitrobass24 said:
wow thats actually surprising that it does not seem to work.

Can I see a screenshot of your D: drive (data) property sheet from the server?
Click to expand...

Sure, what did you want to see exactly?

D: drive properties



Current utilization



I added a bunch of stuff today, and it all went to disks 4 and 5, didn't touch the system. I'm a happy camper again.
 
I never bothered with the largest drive as the system disk.

I'm rebuilding my WHS right now. Got a new 16 port Adaptec card to go with my 8 port SuperMicro.

So now I have:

Four 160GB WD Scorpio 2.5" drives in RAID10 for the system drive.
Four 750GB Hitachi Deskstar drives
Five 500GB (three Seagate, two Samsung F1) drives
Nine 320GB Seagate drives
One 400GB Seagate drive

If I did the math right that is 23 drives with 9100GB before formatting. I have enough ports for 28 SATA drives and 2 IDE but my case isn't big enough nor is my power supply. Heh.

I guess what I should do is look into some higher density drives.
 
This has been a real informative thread, I was going to put the OS on an 80GB IDE drive but it looks like it'll be going on one of my TB drives. I'm glad a buddy from another forum pointed me here, as I'm going to be building my WHS in the next week. Right now the box is an ancient 1GHz P3 running Win2k server. I'm upgrading it with some of my old AMDX2 parts.

For storage I'm starting off with:

2 x 1TB
2 x 750GB

The case is an old, 1st-gen Lian-Li PC-60 so it isn't the biggest. Eventually, as I acquire more drives I may get a bigger case down the road.
 
Hostile said:
This has been a real informative thread, I was going to put the OS on an 80GB IDE drive but it looks like it'll be going on one of my TB drives. I'm glad a buddy from another forum pointed me here, as I'm going to be building my WHS in the next week. Right now the box is an ancient 1GHz P3 running Win2k server. I'm upgrading it with some of my old AMDX2 parts.

For storage I'm starting off with:

2 x 1TB
2 x 750GB

The case is an old, 1st-gen Lian-Li PC-60 so it isn't the biggest. Eventually, as I acquire more drives I may get a bigger case down the road.
Click to expand...

Dude even a 1Ghz P3 is enough to run WHS albeit a little bit slow. I should know: I'm running WHS on a 866Mhz PIII right now :).
 
MrCrispy said:
There's a DriveBalancer addon which might help.

http://forum.wegotserved.com/index.php?showtopic=6466&st=0

I'm building my WHS as well and would like to know the best way to add storage and data - add a few drives and fill them up, then add more drives and turn on duplication, or add all the drives and then start copying data.
Click to expand...

I am testing this currently, hoping all goes well when I get home from work.

Here is what I have done the past few weeks:
~Began with 2x1TB drives and copied about 680GB of data across. This data (as about 95% of my data will be) is blu-ray .ISO files in folders.
~I then bought another 2x1TB (damn hot deals section) which I added to my system for a total of about 3.8TB of data (about 3.2TB unused or so).
~I then made two more copies across, one with about 680GB of data then about 890GB of data.

This left my system as such:
Drive 0 (OS Drive) - 12% used
WD 1TB - 98%
WD 1TB - 8%
WD 1TB - 10%
WD 1TB - 98%

I verified my data was there and fine, then this morning I began running the drive balancer. I hope it will be finished when I arrive home tonight. Though after reading some post on wegotserved, it seems that I might have to run it a couple times my first go around. I will report back after it is all done on how my drives balanced out. My plan from here on out is to add a 2TB drive about every other month and balance the drives every six months.
 
Oh yea, I knew where you guys were coming from. I figured it was worth the clarification. But you know, the AMD hardware has been sitting in my closet for 6-8 months so it's got nothing better to do.
 
MrCrispy said:
There's a DriveBalancer addon which might help.

http://forum.wegotserved.com/index.php?showtopic=6466&st=0

I'm building my WHS as well and would like to know the best way to add storage and data - add a few drives and fill them up, then add more drives and turn on duplication, or add all the drives and then start copying data.
Click to expand...

I don't know how much I trust this utility. I understand what it does, but after running it twice, which took 12 hours first run, and 8 hours the second, and rebooting my server, duplication has been running for over an hour straight.

I only have 2TB of data! Running this app would probably incapacitate a server with large amounts of storage for days per run, and I think it's questionable whether you'd lose data or not if a disk failed during the task, as if it's working "as intended" there's no reason for the data to be re-duplicated.
 
MrCrispy said:
There's a DriveBalancer addon which might help.

http://forum.wegotserved.com/index.php?showtopic=6466&st=0

I'm building my WHS as well and would like to know the best way to add storage and data - add a few drives and fill them up, then add more drives and turn on duplication, or add all the drives and then start copying data.
Click to expand...

Add all your drives and start transferring data. It doesn't really matter though. It all goes to the same place.
 
I don't know how much I trust this utility.
Click to expand...

Just for shits and giggles I tried it yesterday.

After I saw what it was doing, how long it would take, and re-examined my head about why I was doing it, I stopped it.

WHS didn't like that AT ALL! :D

Red Errors all over the place 'till I figured out which of those "fake data folders" I needed to delete. After deleting those and a reboot, it's all good again.
 
Old Hippie said:
Just for shits and giggles I tried it yesterday.

After I saw what it was doing, how long it would take, and re-examined my head about why I was doing it, I stopped it.

WHS didn't like that AT ALL! :D

Red Errors all over the place 'till I figured out which of those "fake data folders" I needed to delete. After deleting those and a reboot, it's all good again.
Click to expand...

The "red errors" are explained in the readme.txt file, and they are going to happen.
Mine finished, had about 2.0TB of data (all .ISO blu-ray files) and it balanced it all out nicely over 4x1TB drives. It had me worried as all my drives were going to 98%-99% full, but once it finished and I hit refresh, they all read 52-54%, perfect.

The guy has limited hardware to test on it looks like, and after doing it this first time I will probably never do it again. It is nice though to get the first 2.0TB of data even though so I can manage the drives better. Before the balance I had two at 95% and the other two at about 8-9%.
 
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