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Windows Home Server FAQ
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nitrobass24
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Yes increase the size of the c partition
Do not install software or ruin vms from the d partition.
nitrobass24
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Open the disk manager and right click on the d partition on your os disk and choose shrink
Then once you have some unallocated space you can right click on the c partition and expand it to use the new unallocated space.
I'm on my blackberry so I can't really do screenshots right now
Maybe miguel will get on and be able to show you better. But its pretty straight forward.
Then once you have some unallocated space you can right click on the c partition and expand it to use the new unallocated space.
I'm on my blackberry so I can't really do screenshots right now
Maybe miguel will get on and be able to show you better. But its pretty straight forward.
God, I'm actually being quoted as a "go-to" guy? Cool!
Now I might starve, since I probably won't fit the doors. But hey, it's worth it... lol
OK, enough of that. On for what's important.
Someone has been spending too much time on Vista/W7/W2K8/W2K8R2/Vail lately...
That procedure is absolutely correct, but it's only available for post-XP OSes, and WHS is NOT post-XP for all intents and purposes, since it still has a XP-derived kernel...
AFAIK, the only way for you to shrink and expand partitions on pre-Vista OSes (including WHS) is to get hold of a Partition Manager software package, and manually resize the partitions.
I haven't had much experience with partition manager software (nor much luck having them work correctly for me, but that's another story altogether), so I can't really help there. But I think most of them have "resize partition" as a standard operation, so it should be pretty straightforward...
Hope this helps. Oh, and btw, do backup the whole HDD image BEFORE doing ANYTHING with it. If something goes wrong with partition manager software, it usually results in massive data loss (been there, done that, and it was NOT a pretty sight).
nitrobass24
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Exactly (and I literally mean exactly) what I was thinking about when I clicked the link to check on your answer, nitro.Just because you can, doesnt mean you should.
This has been discussed at least a couple of times already on this very thread. In short, DE is a finicky beast, and you never know what will come out of using "D" as normal drive space.
Also, don't forget that tombstones are stored on the "D" drive, and I don't even want to know what will happen if you tax your "D" drive to the point where you no longer have space to add tombstones...
Cheers.
Miguel
I should update everyone as i publicly asked for help. I added another drive outside of the pool and loaded the os on it. The box ran but not the way I wanted to. So I'll hold off on VMs on this box for a little bit. I am in the middle of replacing drives in that box and its going really well.
Since Powerpack 1, WHS will always use the system drive last for storage. So it's safe. Even if its writing a lot of tombstones, the tombstones just point to the data disks where it's really stored.
I'm not saying its supported (heck, a lot of what you can do isn't per EULA), but it's possible and I've had no issues running this way the last two years.
I'm not saying its supported (heck, a lot of what you can do isn't per EULA), but it's possible and I've had no issues running this way the last two years.
Alright, I am a total noob to this WHS i have been playing with PC's for 8yrs now and i pretty much can handle alot of PC issues but this i have been banging away for 3days now. So here it is...
I decided to build a server for shits and giggles. System: my old pentium d 940, 2g ram, m/b ECS 945p-a v1.1, (4) WD1tb, Athena Power BP-SAC3141B HDD internal backplane, 3ware 9650SE-4LPML , ok the problem is i have read that WHS doesn't support the raid controller and also read that some have got the card to work so i need help in getting it to work thanks.... please..... or chould i swap out the motherboard, any suggestions would be great.
I decided to build a server for shits and giggles. System: my old pentium d 940, 2g ram, m/b ECS 945p-a v1.1, (4) WD1tb, Athena Power BP-SAC3141B HDD internal backplane, 3ware 9650SE-4LPML , ok the problem is i have read that WHS doesn't support the raid controller and also read that some have got the card to work so i need help in getting it to work thanks.... please..... or chould i swap out the motherboard, any suggestions would be great.
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nitrobass24
[H]ard|DCer of the Month - December 2009
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If there are Windows 2003 drivers your raid card will work
nowwhatnapster
Limp Gawd
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Is the backup provided in WHS better than using the backup images created by windows 7? Right now I have my windows 7 pro pc’s create full system image backups and save them on my NAS. (I am thinking of switching my nas to whs)
Floridagt, the issue you're referring to does NOT have to do with OS driver support for hardware.
Thing is, Microsoft designed WHS to be a "KISS" OS (that is, as simple to operate as possible for home users), so there would be minimum fuss with hardware installation. So, in short, it simply said "hey, you're free to do whatever you want with the OS in terms of hardware, just be advised we WILL NOT answer support queries that may remotely have to do with RAID implementations, since DE has not been validated with such configurations".
That being said, WHS is W2K3-based, and according to 3-Ware that card seems to have WHQL drivers for W2K3, AND I don't recall reading about any problems between DE and RAID arrays. Sure, DE is supposed to exist instead of RAID, but at the end of the day, a RAID array is still seen by the OS (and DE by extension) as a single volume, no matter how many HDDs it contains. Now, the only thing I don't know about possible side effects with RAID arrays (and you don't need to worry about that one) is if DE was tested with volumes over 2TB, since that requires GPT instead of traditional partitioning. Though I guess NTFS is NTFS, no matter what partitioning scheme you're using.
Thing is, Microsoft designed WHS to be a "KISS" OS (that is, as simple to operate as possible for home users), so there would be minimum fuss with hardware installation. So, in short, it simply said "hey, you're free to do whatever you want with the OS in terms of hardware, just be advised we WILL NOT answer support queries that may remotely have to do with RAID implementations, since DE has not been validated with such configurations".
That being said, WHS is W2K3-based, and according to 3-Ware that card seems to have WHQL drivers for W2K3, AND I don't recall reading about any problems between DE and RAID arrays. Sure, DE is supposed to exist instead of RAID, but at the end of the day, a RAID array is still seen by the OS (and DE by extension) as a single volume, no matter how many HDDs it contains. Now, the only thing I don't know about possible side effects with RAID arrays (and you don't need to worry about that one) is if DE was tested with volumes over 2TB, since that requires GPT instead of traditional partitioning. Though I guess NTFS is NTFS, no matter what partitioning scheme you're using.
I've been using RAID + WHS for a long time. It works fine and driver support is great (Windows 2003 Server is supported by just about everything) although there is slightly more complexity because you have to create RAID volumes to pass to WHS versus just adding drives. Not a big deal. DE works fine and you just manually turn off duplication for folders to use RAID redundancy over duplication.
That's what I was referring. It's not a supported configuration by the OS, but it has been used before with no problems.
First of all, don't forget what pjkenned said. You CAN use RAID arrays on WHS.
That being said, instead of hardware RAID cards, you can also use "dumb" RAID cards, or just about any storage controller that can create 1-drive arrays (which essentially means you'd be plugging in each HDD separately, without any RAID level on it, like the AHCI or IDE modes on the Southbridge). You obviously loose the RAID redundancy (which, in the case of RAID6 is pretty good), AND performance (good RAID6 controllers are monster performers, 500MBps+ sustained is rather common), but WHS might not be the best option if you actually need that kind of performance.
WHS is a consumer-grade OS for al intents and purposes. It's designed to offer Gigabit speeds for NAS (storage) applications, not more than that. Decent 3.5'' 5400rpm HDDs can go there right now, and even streaming 10 25Mbps FullHD videos (remember the 10 user limit for WHS) should be feasible with most current HDDs. More than that and you really need to consider professional NAS solutions and hardware. NIC teaming, RAID5 or RAID6 and such things are clearly NOT for home users, especially because price tends to climb rather exponentially...
I usually say WHS should be enough for IT-centric homes, being able to satisfy most computer geeks (I'm one of them, so no disrespect meant), and especially Frankenbuilds.
SuperMicro and SiI 3132 or 3124-based controllers seem to be very popular for WHS. Both SiI-based controllers allow port multipliers (up to 10 drives over a PCIe 1.1 lane, up to 20 over PCI, respectively), and the Supermicro controllers have two 4-port multilane connectors, so that's 8 ports from either PCI, PCIe 4x or PCIe 2.0 4x (depending on the model). Also, all of them can create 1-drive arrays or be used with "dumb" BIOSes, which don't allow the creation of arrays at all, instead only exposing the bare drives to the OS.
As for hot swap, I'll have to let one of the more knowledgeable guys reply to that one. W2K3 does support hot swap, provided you are using the correct drivers for the controller. ICH7R (which may or may not be present on your motherboard, I couldn't check that out) supports AHCI mode operation, and hot swap is available with ICH7R's AHCI implementation. Same thing for SiI and Supermicro controllers. I don't know is whether DE itself likes hot swapping, I never read anything about that.
You do have, however, to have a special version of WHS to be able to install it on a AHCI-enabled controller, or any controller needing special drivers to boot, for that matter (only applies to the controller where the boot drive is connected, if that one is running on IDE mode, skip this section): AHCI is NOT part of the basic XP/W2K3 set of drivers, so you have to do an "F6-install" to load those drivers BEFORE the OS installer starts copying files. That is tricky to say the least, because WHS install is fully automated, and doesn't allow the "F6-install" routine. Luckily, there have been guys who have made special WHS install CDs containing those missing drivers, so you can handle that situation.
Now, one last thing: if I remember correctly, one of Tranquil PC's 1st-gen WHS was based on a 5-drive Atom setup, where the main OS drive was NOT hot swappable (it was connected to the motherboard's SATA port), and the other four were. Actually, that server used a standard D945GCLF2 motherboard, coupled with an Addonics (or clone) SiI 3124 4-port SATA2 card. In short, you could hot-swap the non-OS drives (hot-swapping the OS drive is NOT a good idea, btw... lol)
Sorry for the long post.
Miguel, thanks for clearing things up,
i did alot of reading this wkend. so i decided to use WHS the easy way for now, Once i figure out the niche's i'll reformat and try the controller or i may try something totally different, since this is for home use nothing else just got tired of my cheap ass NAS devices breaking and losing data. Thanks everyone
i did alot of reading this wkend. so i decided to use WHS the easy way for now, Once i figure out the niche's i'll reformat and try the controller or i may try something totally different, since this is for home use nothing else just got tired of my cheap ass NAS devices breaking and losing data. Thanks everyone
Hi, I have 2 questions:
1) Do you guys defrag your C drive on your WHS? Mine recently went down to 0bytes. I fixed the issue, now I'm wondering if I should defrag.
2) The WHS addin I installed: Home Server SMART is telling me one of my drives has a bad sector: http://i47.tinypic.com/1606grd.png What should I do? Run chkdsk?
1) Do you guys defrag your C drive on your WHS? Mine recently went down to 0bytes. I fixed the issue, now I'm wondering if I should defrag.
2) The WHS addin I installed: Home Server SMART is telling me one of my drives has a bad sector: http://i47.tinypic.com/1606grd.png What should I do? Run chkdsk?
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I don't believe I ever defragged the C drive. Mainly because I'm scared something might go horribly wrong and mess up DE (I know, it's on a different drive, I'm just that paranoid), but also because I never really felt the need to. After all, after boot up, it doesn't really need to trash the OS drive too much... Though it's probably not that bad of an idea to run it once every couple of months or so...
That's not a bad sector, that's a reallocated sector. It just means there is one or more sectors where, for some reason (including physical defects), the drive can't access correctly, so it has marked them as unusable, and remapped that sector to the extra spare drive space every HDD has.
It might not be a bad thing per se (since there might not be actually anything wrong physically with the sector), though a sector reallocation will cause HDD performance degradation, since the drive has to seek to that sector and back even if apparently the data stream is a constant sector block.
Chkdsk might help for less severe reallocated sector errors, since it actually scans the entire drive. However, most of those errors can only be corrected with a low-level format (only available with specific manufacturer tools), if at all.
Chkdsk shouldn't hurt, so you might want to try that. If not for anything else, you end up knowing exactly how all of your HDDs are in terms of health. Also, check the WHS logs to see if you catch write errors for any HDD. If that drive (or any other) is experiencing frequent write (or read, for that matter) errors, then toss it and put another one in ASAP. I had one 1.5TB Samsung die on me with HDD errors starting from the middle of the drive onwards (it was at least 6GB worth of unusable platter space, I couldn't even end the scans, they took too long), and at the time the only way I had to know was from the WHS logs and WHS complaining of CRC errors when writing stuff to the drive (which in itself was hard to pinpoint, since you never know exactly what drive your data is being written to...)
nitrobass24
[H]ard|DCer of the Month - December 2009
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Do not run CHKDSK on the D: Volume. It will royally Eff up DE.
If you need to run CHKDSK pull the drive from the WHS and hook it up to a different computer and run it.
If you need to run CHKDSK pull the drive from the WHS and hook it up to a different computer and run it.
But on the wegotserved forums they have I guide to run chkdsk: http://wiki.wegotserved.com/index.php?title=Check_All_Drives_In_Your_Server_For_Errors
It's just a batch file...
It's just a batch file...
jay2472000
Gawd
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The proper way to chkdsk a drive in WHS is to open my computer. Navigate to c:\fs\ and in there youll see your drive names.
The syntax would be as follows assuming W is the drive we want to scan Chkdsk c:\fs\W
Obviously you have other parameters you can toggle using the /r , /f, /x command following the original command.
Happy serving.
The syntax would be as follows assuming W is the drive we want to scan Chkdsk c:\fs\W
Obviously you have other parameters you can toggle using the /r , /f, /x command following the original command.
Happy serving.
great tip....
nowwhatnapster
Limp Gawd
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I need someone to help me decide if WHS if the right OS for me.
I have a NAS/Server I built running an illegitmate copy of Windows Server 2003. The NAS has an Adaptec 5405 serving up 4x500GB drives in Raid 5. I have 3 PC's at home all of which have their My Documents folder mapped to a share on the NAS. I also have my windows 7 PC's create full system images and store them on the NAS in the event of a hard drive failure. I also use this NAS to backup data from two remote PC's via SyncbackSE over FTP. I hope to one day expand upon this idea and backup some family members data and possibly create full system images for their boxes. This would a good excuse for me to spending money on PC parts
That's basically it in a nutshell. So... does WHS offer any advantages/disadvantages for me? Should I stick with WHS, would XP or 7 be just fine? Some of the media based features of WHS might be fun to play with... but I dunno.
I have a NAS/Server I built running an illegitmate copy of Windows Server 2003. The NAS has an Adaptec 5405 serving up 4x500GB drives in Raid 5. I have 3 PC's at home all of which have their My Documents folder mapped to a share on the NAS. I also have my windows 7 PC's create full system images and store them on the NAS in the event of a hard drive failure. I also use this NAS to backup data from two remote PC's via SyncbackSE over FTP. I hope to one day expand upon this idea and backup some family members data and possibly create full system images for their boxes. This would a good excuse for me to spending money on PC parts
That's basically it in a nutshell. So... does WHS offer any advantages/disadvantages for me? Should I stick with WHS, would XP or 7 be just fine? Some of the media based features of WHS might be fun to play with... but I dunno.
If you are comfortable with Windows Server 2003, you will feel right at home with WHS. The nice thing about WHS is that it has great integrated backup, and it does a good job serving media to Win 7 MC. Honestly, the cost of WHS is equal to or less than XP or Win 7 so I would go with WHS. You get other features like having a remote desktop server and having files be downloaded in either .exe or .zip formats though the web interface.
i am planning to redo my WHS, will a single intel nic on mobo handle 3 bluray 22GB video files being distributed to 3 different htpc's at the same time?
Case: Li lian Q08
mobo: Intel DH57JG
cpu: Core i3 - 530
Ram: 2GB
psu: Cosair Corsair TX750W 750W ATX 12V 60A 24PIN ATX 140mm fan - existing item (will it work?)
pci-e: need a recommendation on a good 4 port sata card that also has a esata for a port multiplier or a good 4 port sata card where i can use 1 internal sata port to be an esata port that again has port multiplier or a 8 port card, where a couple can be used for esata port multiplier. Esata to be used to add a NAS if i have to in a couple of years, i figure 14TB should hold me for a bit
HDD's: 7 WD 2TB drives (i plan to use the 5.25" slot for the 7th 3.5" HDD)
Case: Li lian Q08
mobo: Intel DH57JG
cpu: Core i3 - 530
Ram: 2GB
psu: Cosair Corsair TX750W 750W ATX 12V 60A 24PIN ATX 140mm fan - existing item (will it work?)
pci-e: need a recommendation on a good 4 port sata card that also has a esata for a port multiplier or a good 4 port sata card where i can use 1 internal sata port to be an esata port that again has port multiplier or a 8 port card, where a couple can be used for esata port multiplier. Esata to be used to add a NAS if i have to in a couple of years, i figure 14TB should hold me for a bit
HDD's: 7 WD 2TB drives (i plan to use the 5.25" slot for the 7th 3.5" HDD)
nowwhatnapster
Limp Gawd
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Thanks. Got another question. Cost wise it sounds good. I have a spare copy of XP, but I'm holding off on using that. It's basically windows 7 pro or WHS.
I definitely rely on using my own FTP. Can WHS run an FTP server like filezilla? Rather. Is there an FTP add-in?
I'm also thinking I might use WHS as a DLNA Digial Media Server. I have alot of pictures and video on my NAS presently that I would love to share on a TV, or other device.
WHS has a WMC-based media service built in. WMC is not perfectly DLNA compliant, but is close enough for most users most of the time.
WHS is Server-2003. You can enable any Server-2003 service that is not license-key protected, including the FTP server. Doing so is technically a violation of the license you get with WHS, but they do not do anything to prevent it. They also don't do anything to make it easy - you've got to know your way around Server-2003 to figure it all out. Just to prove that I could, I've enabled & tested several services including FTP, DHCP & DNS. They work great if you know how to set them up.
Since Server-2003 is pretty much XP in the kernal and driver model, you can run (almost) any XP based software. So pretty much any XP-compatible 3rd party DLNA server or 3rd party FTP server should work for you too. You will probably have to open up some things before they will work completely - WHS uses a pretty severe set of policies in the Windows firewall. This isn't so much a compatibility issue as it is getting the configuration right. Think of it this way: XP and win7 start with almost everything open in the firewall and you have to close off the things you want to protect - WHS starts with almost everything closed and you have to open things up on purpose.
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nowwhatnapster
Limp Gawd
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Thanks. I have been sold on WHS. I have placed my order.
Another question: I believe I will see a performance drop in my data transfer speeds when I switch to WHS. My current bottle neck is my gigabit ethernet connection. My primary PC is SSD with sequential read speeds of 230MB/sec and my raid 5 array writes at 190MB/sec. I get about a 75% network utilization when copying files to the server.
Now what I have gathered is that WHS copys files to the primary C drive and then to the storage drives which in my case is my raid array. So my new bottleneck would be my ancient C drive in my server. Is this correct?
If so, I guess I will need to swap that C drive for something speedier.
Another question: I believe I will see a performance drop in my data transfer speeds when I switch to WHS. My current bottle neck is my gigabit ethernet connection. My primary PC is SSD with sequential read speeds of 230MB/sec and my raid 5 array writes at 190MB/sec. I get about a 75% network utilization when copying files to the server.
Now what I have gathered is that WHS copys files to the primary C drive and then to the storage drives which in my case is my raid array. So my new bottleneck would be my ancient C drive in my server. Is this correct?
If so, I guess I will need to swap that C drive for something speedier.
nowwhatnapster
Limp Gawd
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NIce!
Hmm, I know I'm a little late to this particular discussion, but I felt I needed to chip in just a little bit.
I assume you know WHS uses Drive Extender, which not only takes every HDD you might want to throw at it and adds it to the storage pool, but also makes sure the data you want is duplicated to two drives.
This way of managing storage space rather conflicts with the concept of RAID, which also duplicates data.
In short, what I'm trying to say is this: first up, current-gen WHS can't handle volumes over 2TB; second, since you have a RAID array, you might want to either drop DE's duplication feature (it's off by default, I believe, and you WILL need to slipstream your storage controller drivers to the install CD if the system volume ends up on the controller) or create four 1-disk arrays on your controller, and add each one to the pool. WHS duplicates data on a 1:1 ratio (backups have a different method, and 2 similar machines can end up having a total backup used space just a tad over a single machine), which means you still have redundancy (without the lengthy rebuild times). And third, most HDDs nowadays have high enough transfer rates to keep even a Gigabit line busy most of the time, so you don't need to worry too much about it (also, don't forget SMB file transfers are cached as much as possible, to the extent of the available memory, AND most home user usage scenarios don't usually require constant 100MBps+ speeds... lol)
Hope this helps.
WHS (v1) limit is 32 drives.
Microsoft has not stated what the limit will be for Vail, but I would presume similar (32ish).
Current public preview of Vail says it version of DE is "unstable" with more than 10 drives, but that this will be corrected prior to the RTM.
32 *volumes*, not drives. If you RAID drives prior to adding them to the pool, that 32-drive limit expands "a little" (it really depends on how big of an array you can create, though if memory serves me right WHS v1 doesn't really handle volumes over 2TB too well...).
As for Vail, 10 volumes is the current official limit, but that's because it's still in beta stage. I don't know, however, if there will be more than one version of Vail (both "standard" and "premium" versions have been rumored to be available), but that might actually be a differentiating feature. 10 drives does sound kind of short, though... I have a 12-drive capable enclosure for my WHS (thinking ahead...
), and I can squeeze at least four or five more in there before having to rethink the whole setup (actually, with 5-in-3 converters, I could go up to 20, including a 2.5'' system drive, but that would be too hot and heavy to handle... those 4-in-3 converters can barely keep the drives cool as it is, and there are only four of them in the system as of now...), and it would suck big time to be limited like that.nowwhatnapster
Limp Gawd
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Thanks for the input. I should have researched a bit more before attempting install. Here's how it went down.
I did not realize WHS uses the OS drive as part of the storage pool. So installing the OS on a non hardware raided drive meant I would have had to turn on folder replication to protect it, which would completely defeat the purpose of having a 1.5TB hardware raid array in the pool.
Since I had a deadline of Friday to get this thing working, I installed WHS directly onto my 1.5TB Raid 5 array. I read that storage drivers might be an issue but the install was very painless. I installed via USB stick. I was prompted for storage drivers. So I unplugged the USB, copied drivers onto it, plugged it back in, installed drivers, and my array showed up. Rest of install went without issue.
For now this works, but not really how I had intended it to work. There seems to be some debate whether using raided drives are an asset to WHS or not. It seems to make sense to use it for the OS drive at least. Because reinstalling an OS is always a pain and with this OS it leaves your data inaccessible until it is reinstalled.
As I mentioned before I was concerned what my throughput would be and unfortunately it has been significantly reduced. My network utilization has dropped from 75% to 45%. During most transfer's it hovers around 30% now. When looking at the activity through disk manager add-in I am seeing 70-90MB/s activity with highs of 120MB/s. Clearly the array is churning away but it does not nearly as fast as before and there is no longer a 1:1 ratio for throughput and disk activity. I have a feeling my bottleneck might be the CPU (Cerleron 440) which is hitting 99% utilization during transfers. I am planning on swapping the 440 for a spare e5200 this weekend.
I guess I can live with this throughput, but it makes me wonder how well WHS would work with non raided drives and folder replication. Must be slow as hell.
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Glad to help. Only wished I could have pitched in earlier...
Vail is fixing that, apparently. You can choose NOT to add the system drive to the pool. Probably a good thing if you're using the webserver and other I/O stuff requiring access to the system drive. Or as a *cough* torrenting *cough* landing zone.
That is actually VERY good news. It seems WHS's installer is a XP/Vista hybrid. XP would have BSOD'd if you pulled that one...
I have to agree with you on that one, for the system drive. It's the biggest single point of failure on a WHS machine, and it is VERY difficult (and risky) to reinstall the OS. The pool drives don't really need RAID (because of DE), unless you're Frankenbuilding a multi-gigabit capable WHS, and even then you're probably using the wrong OS for the job
For the system drive, however, the OS should allow an easy-to-configure software RAID1 setup. Though you CAN go there with a Frankenbuild.
I'm running my WHS with a Celeron E3200 and 4GB of RAM. I hit transfer walls at around 3GB because of caching, and my usual final transfer speeds hover around 65~85MBps (Windows only moves one file at a time, and pauses after each one, plus there ARE limits to how fast you can move stuff around using two standard 3.5'' HDDs, one 501LJ and a 203WI/154UI combo...), with no apparent CPU bottlenecks, though I'll check that out just in case. It does seem that single-core is holding you back, but I'd also check eventual IRQ sharing issues. Those can KILL performance.
As I said, I'm just fine with non-RAIDed volumes. Folder Duplication is NOT done at the same time you write stuff to the WHS machine. It runs a few times each day, only (Vail changes that, AFAIK, the DE layer will apparently divide writes to two drives automatically). You might actually be trying to read stuff when DE is managing stuff, and that WILL kill performance (even watching a FullHD movie when DE is doing its thing becomes hard).