Want to upgrade my WHS 2011 PC

[dar124]

I've been using a HP dc7600 motherboard in a generic case as my "server" for a while now. It's an older motherboard, but has been good since I've been using it. I've upgraded most of my other PC's over the past couple of years and am thinking that it's probably time to look at upgrading my server. I've put it off because it has been working good and it also seems like it's going to be a bit of a chore to do. But I'd rather be a bit proactive and get something newer set up on my own schedule instead of being with out a server (and all my files, etc) for a couple of weeks while I get parts, build a new machine, configure the OS, etc. I'm at a point now where I think that I've got most of the parts that I'd need, so I'd like to look into this a bit further.

I have no problems building the new PC and installing the WHS 2011 OS. But how complicated will it be to switch my 3 2TB drives over to the new machine?? Will I be able to just connect the drives to the server and then set up the "videos", "pictures", "documents", etc folders as shared folders?? I'm almost thinking that I'll need an extra drive to connect to the server and then one by one copy the data from each of the 3 existing HD's over. Hopefully I'm overthinking this and it's just as simple as connecting the drives and sharing the folders.

Thanks in advance.

 

[dar124]

Hey, just figured I'd stop back here and post a quick update after my server upgrade this past weekend.

I came across this article last week: https://forums.servethehome.com/ind...-after-motherboard-upgrade.12240/#post-117001 I followed the info in the link it worked flawlessly!!!

A couple of weeks ago I got the Lenovo board, PSU and WHS 2011 installed in the Cooler Master case. So this past weekend I moved on to transferring the 2TB data drives over to the new machine.

I installed the drives in my server and changed around a few of the drive letters to match what the drive letters were in the old server. Then renamed the folders on the 2TB drives that I just installed to "Documents old", "Videos old", Pictures old", etc. After that, I moved the shared folders that were created on the C:\ drive when I did the new WHS install to the corresponding 2TB drives. So the drives would have a "Documents" and a "Documents old" folder on it, the same for Videos, Pictures, etc. And then I copied the data from "Documents old" folder to the Documents folder I moved over from C:\. And finally I deleted all the "old" folders.

It worked like a charm. No issues at all. I've got all my original folders, with data intact shared over my network.

I still have to do some cable management and get the final few add-ins installed. But other than that I'm back up and running WHS 2011 on my new hardware!!!