Windows Home Server and Data Redundancy?

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Sgt_Strider

Gawd
Joined
Oct 29, 2003
Messages
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For my mini file server that I want to build, I'm thinking of installing WHS since I have a copy lying around. I heard it's relatively easy to install and configure, which is nice. I don't know too much about WHS and how well it retains data in the event that something goes wrong. I know that WHS doesn't officially support RAID configuration, but has anyone tried installing WHS and or its successor (Vail) on a RAID setup?

In the mean time, I plan on installing 4x Hitachi Deskstar 7K1000.C 1TB in a soft RAID setup. I want to see how that performs before I get a good quality 4 port Areca RAID card. Should I be able to feel confident that my data is secure on a WHS setup with a software/hardware RAID configuration?

Thx!
 
If your disks don't have TLER they could be dropped from the RAID, that's one of the biggest downsides for consumers wanting RAID on Windows platform; virtually all RAID solutions available require TLER disks. Solutions available to Linux/BSD do not require this, when using a non-RAID controller and using software RAID instead.

The same applies to (at least my) Areca controller. Not sure about Hitachi and TLER, think Hitachi might call it CCTL instead together with Samsung.
 
WHSv1 uses MBR, so you need to do some finangling to use 2TB+ volumes/GPT.
WHSv2 doesn't have that problem.

Both solutions use regular NTFS volumes, so as long as the volume (if you're using soft/hardraid) is viable, your data should be accessible even if the system drive is hosed.

to sub.mesa:
A disk being dropped from a hardware RAID card is a problem for the RAID controller, not the operating system. Why are you singling out Windows?
 
Onboard RAID is not hardware RAID, and as such it applies to Windows software RAID and (virtually) all Hardware RAID. Just not Linux/BSD software RAID, which can work without TLER disks just fine, as well as a handful of hardware RAID controllers apparently, which have different timeout firmware. I've not found a list of timeout behavior for hardware RAID yet.

But the 2TiB is a real problem i'd guess. Windows doesn't support partition-less filesystems, and the XP-based WHS doesn't support GPT (not that newer Windows support GPT that well).

I guess one should just use like WHS was meant to be used: with duplication on, and on normal non-RAID disks and controllers.
 
xnoodle said:
WHSv1 uses MBR, so you need to do some finangling to use 2TB+ volumes/GPT.
WHSv2 doesn't have that problem.

Both solutions use regular NTFS volumes, so as long as the volume (if you're using soft/hardraid) is viable, your data should be accessible even if the system drive is hosed.

to sub.mesa:
A disk being dropped from a hardware RAID card is a problem for the RAID controller, not the operating system. Why are you singling out Windows?
Click to expand...

So how should I configure the 4x 1TB hard drives with WHS?
 
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