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Old hardware to WHS setup?

C

CyberCecil

Limp Gawd
Joined
Nov 7, 2001
Messages
497
I recently upgraded to a core 2 duo system and I was thinking of using my old setup as a Windows Home Server.

My old hardware:

Athlon XP-M 2400+
Abit NF7-S v2
1 Gig RAM
Antec True 550w power supply

Will this setup be adequate for a WHS build? I plan to have 6 to 10 hard drives (including boot drive). I will be backing up 3 Windows computers and streaming video to just one.

The motherboard has 2 sata 150 ports I plan on using for the boot drive. I was thinking of using the RAID 1 feature of the motherboard to mirror the OS drive. Will this hamper the server at all? For the RAID 1 I have two 320 Gig hard drives but they are two different brands. Will that matter for mirroring?

I currently have a Promise TX4 PCI card to use to start and adding one of these and one of these when I need to expand the drive space.

Any advice is welcome.

Thanks
 
the hardware you describe will work fine

however, if funds allow you may wish to consider cheap 'n' cheerful hardware
what you spend on new components may be offset by the increased efficiency of the system
an intel mATX atom mobo is rather inexpensive
 
Asposium said:
the hardware you describe will work fine

however, if funds allow you may wish to consider cheap 'n' cheerful hardware
what you spend on new components may be offset by the increased efficiency of the system
an intel mATX atom mobo is rather inexpensive
Click to expand...

Unfortunately I have no extra funds. That's why I'm hoping my old system will work for a while. Plus I hate just having it sit around in boxes doing nothing.
 
CyberCecil said:
Unfortunately I have no extra funds. That's why I'm hoping my old system will work for a while. Plus I hate just having it sit around in boxes doing nothing.
Click to expand...

Hmmm, electricity ain't free though, either.

I used to think nothing of running my file server 'til I realized it was running me $30+/month easily...
 
How much power does the Althlon XP-M 2400+ consume? I remember my old XP 3000+ was a beast and took alot of power, but maybe the mobile chips are better. The older AMD cpus arent exactly known for their power efficiency though. If the power consumption is too high (100w +), then it might be more economical to just sell off the system (you might be able to get $100 for it) and just go with an Atom based setup or something more efficient.
 
Tolyngee said:
Hmmm, electricity ain't free though, either.

I used to think nothing of running my file server 'til I realized it was running me $30+/month easily...
Click to expand...

I don't intend to have it running 24/7. If it runs any more than 3 or 4 hours a day I'd be surprised. But I will keep an eye on the electricity bill and see what it is actually costing me.
 
Tolyngee said:
I used to think nothing of running my file server 'til I realized it was running me $30+/month easily...
Click to expand...

Folding and/or running at 100% load by any chance?

My Q6600 WHS only draws 80W, 24/7/365 but I have it underclocked and idle. That's roughly $66 a year at current rates.
 
aldamon said:
Folding and/or running at 100% load by any chance?

My Q6600 WHS only draws 80W, 24/7/365 but I have it underclocked and idle. That's roughly $66 a year at current rates.
Click to expand...

To be fair, you're more than likely using a Kill-A-Watt or some other derivative device which is well known for inaccurate power readings.
 
If you are only running 3-4 hours a day, then power consumption isnt really a concern and your AthlonXP is just fine. It might limit yourself in the future though as far as upgrades go. Any reason why you are RAIDing the OS drive? RAID usually isnt recommended with WHS.
 
aldamon said:
Folding and/or running at 100% load by any chance?

My Q6600 WHS only draws 80W, 24/7/365 but I have it underclocked and idle. That's roughly $66 a year at current rates.
Click to expand...

You're asking someone who once had 28 IDE drives hooked into a fileserver via a ghetto mod...

This system that I unplugged though had 12 drives (at least), and possibly was under a pretty good load most of the time doing other stuff.

But yes, unplugging it has seen my electric bill drop tremendously. $36 easy. I'm on a level payment plan, and suddenly it's showing I'm overpaying each month by about $50 from what I was paying before. It dropped enough that my electric company is actually giving me "energy saver" (or something) credits on my bill...

But, yeah, if a set-up's only costing $5/m in electricity, I'd leave it on, and not risk the on/off/on/off cycle killing a drive then having to waste more money to RMA it than had I just left it running...
 
I say run the Athlon and get familiar with WHS. When you can down the road upgrade to something more energy efficient.
 
dydx said:
If you are only running 3-4 hours a day, then power consumption isnt really a concern and your AthlonXP is just fine. It might limit yourself in the future though as far as upgrades go. Any reason why you are RAIDing the OS drive? RAID usually isnt recommended with WHS.
Click to expand...

I was thinking about some redundancy for the OS drive. I have been reading a lot of horror stories about people losing all the data in there drive pool when the WHS OS drive dies and it needs to be reinstalled on a new disk. I thought that as long as I had two 320 Gig hard drives I could take advantage of the motherboard's RAID 1 to add some extra protection.
 
CyberCecil said:
I was thinking about some redundancy for the OS drive. I have been reading a lot of horror stories about people losing all the data in there drive pool when the WHS OS drive dies and it needs to be reinstalled on a new disk. I thought that as long as I had two 320 Gig hard drives I could take advantage of the motherboard's RAID 1 to add some extra protection.
Click to expand...

In my experience, WHS does not like system drives being part of RAID arrays, especially if it's an on-board (i.e., cheap) implementation. If you were using a big $ hardware RAID card, it might be OK, but I still wouldn't recommend it.

Besides - the beauty of WHS is the duplication of the data across multiple drives w/o worrying about RAID. I've migrated my data across a number of WHS installations (migrating hardware, monkeying around, etc.) w/o loss of data. Most of the horror stories stem from the earlier days; recent incarnations of WHS (on power pack 3 now) handle OS reinstallations much better.
 
LhasaCM said:
In my experience, WHS does not like system drives being part of RAID arrays, especially if it's an on-board (i.e., cheap) implementation. If you were using a big $ hardware RAID card, it might be OK, but I still wouldn't recommend it.

Besides - the beauty of WHS is the duplication of the data across multiple drives w/o worrying about RAID. I've migrated my data across a number of WHS installations (migrating hardware, monkeying around, etc.) w/o loss of data. Most of the horror stories stem from the earlier days; recent incarnations of WHS (on power pack 3 now) handle OS reinstallations much better.
Click to expand...

That's good to know. That also means I can just add it to the drive pool.

What are the must have add-ins for WHS. I plan to tinker with a bare WHS setup before I move my data, so suggest away. If I run into issues there will be no data loss to worry about
 
LhasaCM said:
In my experience, WHS does not like system drives being part of RAID arrays, especially if it's an on-board (i.e., cheap) implementation. If you were using a big $ hardware RAID card, it might be OK, but I still wouldn't recommend it.

Besides - the beauty of WHS is the duplication of the data across multiple drives w/o worrying about RAID. I've migrated my data across a number of WHS installations (migrating hardware, monkeying around, etc.) w/o loss of data. Most of the horror stories stem from the earlier days; recent incarnations of WHS (on power pack 3 now) handle OS reinstallations much better.
Click to expand...

i have wondered something similar

all my important data is duplicated

HOWEVER the important data that comprises the system drive is not duplicated

it would be nice if WHS supported a RAID 1 implementation for the system drive
though, to be fair, i haven't any problems....yet
 
[LYL]Homer;1034988013 said:
I say run the Athlon and get familiar with WHS. When you can down the road upgrade to something more energy efficient.
Click to expand...

i did exactly the above. :D

used an old athlon xp 1600 system to "play"
then later upgraded to an atom mobo for
• lower noise
• lower power consumption
• on-board gfx -- kind of linked to above
• on-board USB -- my athlon mobo didn't have on-board USB!!!
• because i like to tinker

BUT, the old system enabled me to determine that WHS would be useful for my needs

nearly a year later, and with two supermicro 5 into 3 mobile racks on order, the server is almost finished ..... well that's what i tell myself and the mrs. :p
 
CyberCecil said:
I currently have a Promise TX4 PCI card to use to start and adding one of these and one of these when I need to expand the drive space.
Click to expand...

the SUPERMICRO AOC-SAT2-MV8 seems to be a good choice. it is very popular here; i have one ready to be installed in my server when required. :D i had an adaptec 4-port SATA card. FWIW the SUPERMICRO AOC-SAT2-MV8 can be found quite cheap on ebay.

for the drive rack, may I recommend the SUPERMICR CSE-M35TQ?

i have two of these on order from the states
the M35TQ is slightly more expensive than the M35T1, however the TQ will be somewhat more "future proof"
 
Asposium said:
the SUPERMICRO AOC-SAT2-MV8 seems to be a good choice. it is very popular here; i have one ready to be installed in my server when required. :D i had an adaptec 4-port SATA card. FWIW the SUPERMICRO AOC-SAT2-MV8 can be found quite cheap on ebay.

for the drive rack, may I recommend the SUPERMICR CSE-M35TQ?

i have two of these on order from the states
the M35TQ is slightly more expensive than the M35T1, however the TQ will be somewhat more "future proof"
Click to expand...

What's the difference?
 
Asposium said:
i have wondered something similar

all my important data is duplicated

HOWEVER the important data that comprises the system drive is not duplicated

it would be nice if WHS supported a RAID 1 implementation for the system drive
though, to be fair, i haven't any problems....yet
Click to expand...

Yeah...hopefully the upcoming incarnation (based on Server 2008, due out next year-ish) will tighten up those weak points. The failure of the OS drive doesn't lose duplicated data, but it does make it annoying to reacquire. (http://social.microsoft.com/Forums/en/whsfaq/thread/cf354b5d-b37b-4b7f-a0d5-8e573697777f has a good post on the procedure, but it's basically "take each drive and copy files over" if the server reinstallation procedure doesn't work)
 
Asposium said:
i did exactly the above. :D

used an old athlon xp 1600 system to "play"
then later upgraded to an atom mobo for
• lower noise
• lower power consumption
• on-board gfx -- kind of linked to above
• on-board USB -- my athlon mobo didn't have on-board USB!!!
• because i like to tinker

BUT, the old system enabled me to determine that WHS would be useful for my needs

nearly a year later, and with two supermicro 5 into 3 mobile racks on order, the server is almost finished ..... well that's what i tell myself and the mrs. :p
Click to expand...

Yeah...same here. I keep migrating my home server to "newer" hardware as it becomes available through my tinkering, though I've settled on an Atom 330 implementation for now. I'm interested in how much (if any) of an improvement the upcoming Pineview chips/corresponding chipset offer over the current generation.
 
Danny Bui said:
To be fair, you're more than likely using a Kill-A-Watt or some other derivative device which is well known for inaccurate power readings.
Click to expand...

I underclock my Q6600 with EIST since it's not under load and I'm using the screen on my UPS to determine the power draw. I also use a low-power video card and an efficient PSU. If the UPS is wrong it would not work as advertised when the power goes out. Haven't had any problems yet.

I don't think the OP will be approaching $36 a month in electricity with his proposed build.
 
If power usage is a concern, the OP could undervolt & underclock the Athlon XP-M 2400+ to minimum levels, since WHS does not need a powerful CPU, if will be strictly serving files.
 
CKTurbo128 said:
If power usage is a concern, the OP could undervolt & underclock the Athlon XP-M 2400+ to minimum levels, since WHS does not need a powerful CPU, if will be strictly serving files.
Click to expand...

If its underclocked/undervolted, how much electricity will he save?
 
CKTurbo128 said:
If power usage is a concern, the OP could undervolt & underclock the Athlon XP-M 2400+ to minimum levels, since WHS does not need a powerful CPU, if will be strictly serving files.
Click to expand...

I'm not going to worry about underclocking or anything until I let the server run for a couple of months and see what the actual power usage levels are.
 
Well, I have my Windows Home Server up and running. It was painless to get it working with my Windows 7 box, I copied over a little data to the storage pool to test it for a week or so, then I am moving everything over.

So far, I really like it. :D
 
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