Windows Home Server FAQ

Is there a recommended way to reformat a WHS box without affecting the storage pool?
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If you're talkin "reinstall" the origional MS OS disc should give you the option but I have had the experience when the origional disc gave me that option one time and then decided against it when I tried again.

I worked around it by downloading a copy of the X-Files install disc that gave me a reinstall option.

And WHS should work the same way for a storage pool disk
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Forget about it.

WHS is a whole new ballgame and will delete all data on discs added to it's storage pool.
You'll need to transfer all the data to a new pool after WHS has been installed.
 
Has anyone installed WHS into a virtual machine? I'd like to get it installed with Hyper-V.

I do have an existing WHS though. Most of the data I can just copy onto an external (how do you copy individual pc backups?). How does WHS work in a VM regarding disk space? Since it's just a single VHD.
 
tgabe213 said:
Has anyone installed WHS into a virtual machine? I'd like to get it installed with Hyper-V.

I do have an existing WHS though. Most of the data I can just copy onto an external (how do you copy individual pc backups?). How does WHS work in a VM regarding disk space? Since it's just a single VHD.
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Well with Hyper-V it actually works very similarly to using it on a bare metal.

The OS is the only portion that must be installed into a .VHD
You can map actual disk into a Hyper-V VM and use them like you would on the host.

The only part that sux is installing WHS into a VM because of no mouse support until you install the hyper-V tools.

This is actually what I plan on doing when I upgrade my server, and I think it will work much better for my needs
 
Yup. I want to run server 08, and throw whs in a VM, a web server in a VM, and a DB server in a VM.

I'll keep my VM specific questions in the VM forum :p
 
SKiZZ said:
The intel drivers don't allow it as an option on WHS. If they do, I can't find it. I have it enabled on my other pc's.
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Found out why. The advanced properties don't show up in an Remote Desktop session. It still didn't help after I did finally change it.
 
Has anyone re-installed a hardware WHS into a VM? I'm primarily concerned about my backups. I have enough space on my desktops hard drive to copy everything out of my shared folders, but what about my backups for all the computers? Like, I have a single image of a PC I worked on 150+ days ago, that I'll need again not too far from now when he screws it up again. Are there physical files I can copy? I don't mind doing the fresh installation, I just want to keep those backups.
 
tgabe213 said:
Has anyone re-installed a hardware WHS into a VM? I'm primarily concerned about my backups. I have enough space on my desktops hard drive to copy everything out of my shared folders, but what about my backups for all the computers? Like, I have a single image of a PC I worked on 150+ days ago, that I'll need again not too far from now when he screws it up again. Are there physical files I can copy? I don't mind doing the fresh installation, I just want to keep those backups.
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http://wiki.wegotserved.com/index.php?title=Migrate_Shares_and_Backups_to_New_System
 
Thanks!

So it looks like the hidden folder 'DE' that has the backups in it are spread across each of the drives?

Looks like I'm going to need to remove 1 of the drives from the storage pool and use that as my main boot drive. Install server 08, then install WHS in the VM. Like you said, the 'boot drive' for WHS is in a VHD, and everything else is on the added drives.
 
I want to migrate my WHS server to another motherboard. My disks are all nearly full and I don't have any to spare. Can I just plug my old WHS disks into the new system?
 
Looking for an add-on or tool for WHS, just had a hard drive failure on my main desktop and has me thinking. Since WHS does a pool of drives, is there a way that I can see what is on an individual drive so if a drive in my WHS is lost I can easily recover it and verify I have it all?

Thanks.
 
I think it's going to depend on how WHS spreads the data across the drives. IIRC, a typical RAID setup spreads the bytes of a file across the drives, not the physical files themselves.

But WHS uses JBOD and I'm not sure how it works that way.
 
theDreamer said:
Looking for an add-on or tool for WHS, just had a hard drive failure on my main desktop and has me thinking. Since WHS does a pool of drives, is there a way that I can see what is on an individual drive so if a drive in my WHS is lost I can easily recover it and verify I have it all?

Thanks.
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The Duplication Info add-in might help, but indirectly. It won't tell you what each physical drive contains, but it does tell you on which drive each shared file is located, duplicated or not.
 
cocoDuck said:
I want to migrate my WHS server to another motherboard. My disks are all nearly full and I don't have any to spare. Can I just plug my old WHS disks into the new system?
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I am not sure if you can just plug it in and it will work but I found this little page when I was looking for answers to my questions about WHS:
http://wiki.wegotserved.com/index.php?title=Migrate_Shares_and_Backups_to_New_System
but it doesn't sound pretty at all.

I have a couple of questions that I hope someone can help me with.

1) Right now I have file duplication on for my personal share \users\username. That isn't exactly what I want. I want to have only a few select sub directories in there duplicated not the whole \users\username directory. Is there a way to tell WHS to do that? Basically I want to have a few sub directories like: \users\username\temp\ that would not be duplicated and have some like \users\username\important\ that would be.

2) If for some reason I want to expand my current system say replace one of the 500GB drives with a 1.5TB is there a way to do that in WHS? AFAIK I can add another 1.5TB drive easily but if I had no more SATA ports and wanted a 500GB drive replaced with a new 1.5TB HD I can't seem to find a way to do that should the need arise in the future.
 
LurkerLito said:
I have a couple of questions that I hope someone can help me with.

1) Right now I have file duplication on for my personal share \users\username. That isn't exactly what I want. I want to have only a few select sub directories in there duplicated not the whole \users\username directory. Is there a way to tell WHS to do that? Basically I want to have a few sub directories like: \users\username\temp\ that would not be duplicated and have some like \users\username\important\ that would be.

2) If for some reason I want to expand my current system say replace one of the 500GB drives with a 1.5TB is there a way to do that in WHS? AFAIK I can add another 1.5TB drive easily but if I had no more SATA ports and wanted a 500GB drive replaced with a new 1.5TB HD I can't seem to find a way to do that should the need arise in the future.
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1 - As far as I know WHS does duplication at the share level. If there are directories you don't want to turn on duplication for then setup a separate share and put them there.

2 - Assuming your 500gb drive is not the drive containing the OS then all you need to do is right click on the drive and select "remove" in the Server Storage tab. It may take several hours to complete. Then power down the server and swap out the drive you removed with the new drive and add the new drive into the pool.
 
cocoDuck said:
I want to migrate my WHS server to another motherboard. My disks are all nearly full and I don't have any to spare. Can I just plug my old WHS disks into the new system?
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You can but just make sure you DO NOT add your old drives into the storage pool at first. If you do, WHS will format the drives.

You will need to manually move the data off the old drives onto somewhere else to store temporarily. Once all data has been removed, you can then add the drive into the pool, then move all the data back.
 
Just starting to research building a home server and saw this on the info page:

Windows Home Server Drive Extender is a file-based replication system that provides three key capabilities:[15]

* Multi-disk redundancy so that if any given disk fails, data is not lost
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Does this mean it does Raid 5-like functionality for you?
 
Dutch said:
Just starting to research building a home server and saw this on the info page:
Does this mean it does Raid 5-like functionality for you?
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If you want to compare it to raid; WHS Drive Extender is more like raid 1.
 
Further, the RAID 1 is only for folders that you specify to have duplication on.

Here's a simple example (for simplicity's sake we won't count the OS portion or formatting) here's how Drive Extender (DE) works:

Drive A = 1tb
Drive B = 1tb
both are in the pool, gives 2000gb total storage.

You have a photos folder with 10gb of photos, and a videos folder with 500gb of video so a total of 510gb of data, with 1490gb free space. Turn on duplication for just the photos and it will now white the photos to both Drive A and B using a total of 520gb, with 1480gb free space.

Next, if the 500gb of video also had duplication turned on then a total of 1020gb would be used, with 980gb free - although with duplication turned on one burns through gigabytes twice as fast. So if the only photos and video folders existed and duplication was on for both you could only write another 490gb of data (980gb free space writing to both disks = 490gb).

Obviously duplication only works when you have more than one drive in the pool. So it's sort of an "expandable dynamic software RAID 1 like" solution. And it works great.
 
[LYL]Homer;1034504292 said:
Further, the RAID 1 is only for folders that you specify to have duplication on.

Here's a simple example (for simplicity's sake we won't count the OS portion or formatting) here's how Drive Extender (DE) works:

Drive A = 1tb
Drive B = 1tb
both are in the pool, gives 2000gb total storage.

You have a photos folder with 10gb of photos, and a videos folder with 500gb of video so a total of 510gb of data, with 1490gb free space. Turn on duplication for just the photos and it will now white the photos to both Drive A and B using a total of 520gb, with 1480gb free space.

Next, if the 500gb of video also had duplication turned on then a total of 1020gb would be used, with 980gb free - although with duplication turned on one burns through gigabytes twice as fast. So if the only photos and video folders existed and duplication was on for both you could only write another 490gb of data (980gb free space writing to both disks = 490gb).

Obviously duplication only works when you have more than one drive in the pool. So it's sort of an "expandable dynamic software RAID 1 like" solution. And it works great.
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Thats a great explanation.
Dreamer add this to the main page please.
 
Is there an addon or somewhere in WHS that will tell you what is currently using a file? I am having an issue all of the sudden with file conflicts.

I have been catching up on some of my TV shows I recorded and stored on the WHS. After I watch an episode I delete it only for the file to reappear but not be accessible. Then WHS reports there are file conflicts. If I reboot my computers, as soon as they come up I am able to delete the files. If I play any more shows off the server I have to repeat the process to delete them.
 
nitrobass24 said:
Well with Hyper-V it actually works very similarly to using it on a bare metal.

The OS is the only portion that must be installed into a .VHD
You can map actual disk into a Hyper-V VM and use them like you would on the host.

The only part that sux is installing WHS into a VM because of no mouse support until you install the hyper-V tools.

This is actually what I plan on doing when I upgrade my server, and I think it will work much better for my needs
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Did you have any issues getting your WHS 'online' while in a VM? I set mine up and everything. Configured it the same as the previous 2 server 08 VM's. Those 2 were on the network immediately. My WHS isn't. I shouldn't have to install any drivers should I? Though my server did BSOD after I believe it was done installing (bad memory).
 
Interesting. Hoping for some feedback.

I noticed that my WHS isn't recognizing the network adapter at all. I was going to give it a static IP cause I thought maybe it wasn't getting one from DHCP, but it doesn't even see the network adapter.

Edit:

I deleted the existing network adapter that was added, and then added the 'Legacy Network Adapter' and that worked fine.
 
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Has anyone installed the WHS connector software onto an install of Server 2008 to back it up?
 
I am about to convert my server 2003 into a WHS, by buying the OS off newegg, but would like to backup to my new WHS w/ time machine. from my current understanding. HP released proprietery solution to it, that is only meant for the HP series of WHS boxes....

i know that you can change the settings on the mac for it to backup to a "non-time machine" volume, but you run the risk of corruption.
 
chronic9 said:
I am about to convert my server 2003 into a WHS, by buying the OS off newegg, but would like to backup to my new WHS w/ time machine. from my current understanding. HP released proprietery solution to it, that is only meant for the HP series of WHS boxes....

i know that you can change the settings on the mac for it to backup to a "non-time machine" volume, but you run the risk of corruption.
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I have a mac and the only reliable solution so far is the HP developed one. The other approaches are work arounds and hacks at best.
 
the hp provided solution cant be downloaded anywhere right? and itll only work with HP hardware?
 
I'm reading through some other threads about what happens when the OS drive starts to fail or does fail. It appears that it isn't just as easy as putting in a new hard drive and using your existing storage pool.

So what exactly do people do when they need to replace the OS drive or do a reinstall?
 
Dutch said:
I'm reading through some other threads about what happens when the OS drive starts to fail or does fail. It appears that it isn't just as easy as putting in a new hard drive and using your existing storage pool.

So what exactly do people do when they need to replace the OS drive or do a reinstall?
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WHS has a "reinstall" option that is supposed to recognize the drives from your storage pool and rebuild your pool without having to reformat the storage drives start from scratch. The problem is that the reinstall option does not always seem to work as advertised. It either isn't available when you boot from the WHS install disk after replacing the system drive, or the reinstall process borks your storage drives. I'm fixing to find out myself as I my OS drive is giving dirty looks. I'm not attempting a reinstall without a complete backup however.
 
Dutch said:
So what exactly do people do when they need to replace the OS drive or do a reinstall?
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This is what I do:

Have all files duplicated.
Pull the OS Drive and set to the side
New clean HDD for the OS install
Install the OS on the new drive
Then add in ONE of the drives from the old system and see if it integrates.
If it does add the other drives
If not, do it the hard way.
 
Can I add USB hard drives to the storage pool?

The drives I'd like to add are USB 2.0 (WD MyBook)...

Also, how much slower will these drives be versus directly connected SATA drives?
 
Yes you can add them.

You will get around 25MB/s throughput on them
 
It may be better if you can to use the USB drives as backup drives instead of adding them to the primary pool given the performance disparity.
 
Ugh.

I think I'll take the enclosures apart and connect them directly.

I've order that 8-port SuperMicro PCIe controller since I'll now have 7 drives connected (plus a DVD drive)...
 
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