*DEAD* Intel NAS Server w/ Intel Celeron 420 1.6GHz, DDR2 & eSATA - $135

[darkamulets]

WHS vs 2003/2008 server std has a few big diffrences

WHS can not connect to a domain or be a domain controller. So if you already have a domain or want to create one WHS is not what you want.

WHS cost wise is a great option, its a stripped down 2003 server with storage and print server features with out the $700 lic cost.

2003/2008 std can run any number of apps that you wish to load including the OEM storage server Edition if you have access to it (same OS that many of the higher end NAS run on with 2003).

If you run 2003 or 2008 I would upgrade the CPU and ram as they have more overhead then WHS and much more then the EMC software

I've kept the default CPU/Memory and the little machine is doing fine. I don't see it doing any form of transcoding but for normal file server stuff it's happy.

 

[DisgruntledVirus]

Info I came across http://mswhs.com/2007/10/05/more-info-intel-entry-storage-system-ss4200-e/

 

[DisgruntledVirus]

Okay, I finally got it to work.

Now this maybe a stupid question, but I don't know what the password is to get in. I didn't set anything as the password, so what does it use?

 

[H20cooled]

I've kept the default CPU/Memory and the little machine is doing fine. I don't see it doing any form of transcoding but for normal file server stuff it's happy.

Correct, like I said you are using it as just a NAS/WHS. If you load 2003/2008 it would be so that you could do more advanced apps which is why you would want to upgrade the CPU and ram as the raid is software raid. if you run raid 5 it will take up resources when you are accessing data or writing to the drives. This is why you would want more ram and cpu, the more you tax the cpu the less throughput you will have with the file storage.

 

[Netopia]

Hmmmm....

I've got access to everything via TechNet, but still not 100% sure of what would be best. I'm probably not going to set up a domain at home, though I could.

So would WS2008 with the Storage server be the most flexible answer? I like the WHS backup scheme. Does SW2008 have anything similar? Also the ability to get to media with things like an Xbox would be a nice plus.

I'm guess that these would NOT be built into WS2008. Maybe I should stick with WHS.

Joe

 

[TheWart]

I had been watching this thread for weeks, and I finally couldn't resist any longer and I went ahead and ordered one today. I am thinking of going the WHS route (I think the drive management is pretty cool, especially the whole 'just add new drives when you want more space), and I have read over the wegotserved slipstream guide.

Unfortunately, I am assuming you have to do the slipstream via a USB stick, but in the guide it says the only way to make a bootable usb stick is to use Windows Vista. I only have a macbook with winxp/osx, so am I sol?

 

[H20cooled]

I just ordered my second unit. The price had gone back up when I checked this afternoon, and then I see it just went back down to 135 shipped so I grabbed a second unit. I put 4 1TB on the first giving me 2.6TB usable space and I have already filled half of it. I think I will try some 1.5 or 2TB drives in the second one.

 

[darkamulets]

I had been watching this thread for weeks, and I finally couldn't resist any longer and I went ahead and ordered one today. I am thinking of going the WHS route (I think the drive management is pretty cool, especially the whole 'just add new drives when you want more space), and I have read over the wegotserved slipstream guide.

Unfortunately, I am assuming you have to do the slipstream via a USB stick, but in the guide it says the only way to make a bootable usb stick is to use Windows Vista. I only have a macbook with winxp/osx, so am I sol?

You could use a PE-disk of some sort, it just basically formats the usb stick and slaps an active partition on it. At which point you could copy the actual WHS files to it from any OS that can read NTFS partitions.

 

[IamDavid]

My WHS 30 day trial is set to expire shortly. Where do I buy an serial number to activate it without reinstalling?

 

[Doomer]

I had been watching this thread for weeks, and I finally couldn't resist any longer and I went ahead and ordered one today. I am thinking of going the WHS route (I think the drive management is pretty cool, especially the whole 'just add new drives when you want more space), and I have read over the wegotserved slipstream guide.

Unfortunately, I am assuming you have to do the slipstream via a USB stick, but in the guide it says the only way to make a bootable usb stick is to use Windows Vista. I only have a macbook with winxp/osx, so am I sol?

Using the procedure posted over at WGS, I wasn't able to get it to work using either XP or Windows 7, only when I used Vista did it work.

 

[SunnyD]

Why O Why O Why. seems like weirdness is a feature of WHS.

My XP machine is showing the Server as "Not Connected". But yet, I can start the console, log into the server and everything is normal. Network is healthy, etc.

So why the heck would it show as not connected when obviously it is connected.

My Win 7 bos is not affected, it shows the server as connected and healthy.

Something I found out... make sure the time and date on the WHS box is set correctly. There was a 2 year old topic on the Microsoft WHS forum about this which didn't have a response with a fix. It took my RMA and that post to stumble upon the fact that I never reset the time/date on my new unit after receiving it. Once I did that, my syncronization/password issues went away.

Okay, I finally got it to work.

Now this maybe a stupid question, but I don't know what the password is to get in. I didn't set anything as the password, so what does it use?

The first time you install the WHS Connector on the 1st client you install it on, it will prompt to set up the specifics of the server including the Admin password.

 

[RebateMonger]

My WHS 30 day trial is set to expire shortly. Where do I buy an serial number to activate it without reinstalling?

WHS trials are for four months. Is your Trial expiring, or do you just need to Activate it so you'll have another three months of use?

Like all Windows Servers before 2008, you can't just "insert a Key" to get it to convert from Trial to Full versions. You basically have to do a "Repair Install" of WHS using a full version of the WHS Install DVD.

To do this this, you boot to a full WHS Install DVD and specify very early in the process that you are performing a "Server Reinstallation" (or whatever the wording is). If this is not offered, STOP! and figure out what's wrong (usually a BIOS disk ordering issue). If you proceed with a "New Server" install, it'll reformat all your disks (after warning you a couple of times).

Doing the upgrade from Trial to Full is fast and easy. I've done it several times. It will preserve all your backups and data shares. You'll lose your web site configuration and the remote access configuration and will have to re-do those.

 

[Netopia]

I wonder if one could just boot from USB? Use a USB --> PATA converter and then a PATA--> CF converter. Loop the USB cable from outside the box back to the inside and mount it safely away. Then install from USB to the other USB drive.

Though access time would be slower because of USB, the great majority of the time one wouldn't care since the actual NAS part of the system would be on the SATA drives. I'm still just trying to think of a way to get Server 2008 installed OFF of the SATA drives.

Joe

 

[Mytime34]

I got my unit yesterday. I upgraded the memory to 2gb and I put in 4ea 500gb Sata II 16mb drives.

It shows 1.4tb of space and all of my PCs see it without any problems.

According to my 2 PC's I am getting transfer rates between 22-30mb sec
It is actually pretty fast.

I have a 14drive IDE to Fibre raid array that is reaching the end of its life and this is going to replace it. I may even pick up another one and drop some 1tb-1.5tb drives in it.

I am still using the EMC software that came with it.

For my next unit can I use the IDE port with an IDE to Sata adapter and put the OS on that drive?

 

[H20cooled]

I wonder if one could just boot from USB? Use a USB --> PATA converter and then a PATA--> CF converter. Loop the USB cable from outside the box back to the inside and mount it safely away. Then install from USB to the other USB drive.

Though access time would be slower because of USB, the great majority of the time one wouldn't care since the actual NAS part of the system would be on the SATA drives. I'm still just trying to think of a way to get Server 2008 installed OFF of the SATA drives.

Joe

get a 1x pcie controller card and run a pata or sata or CF, whatever off of that and you can use the 4 onboard for the raid array


I just got my second unit in yesterday and I am thinking I might do just that as well as run an upgraded cpu on this one. I have already bumped the memory to 2gb. I have tons of new sata and ide 80gb+ notebook drives so I can just use one of them.

One other thought I had was one of the small SSD PCIe cards, not sure if they are bootable, but a 16gb card running 2003 or 2008 would be sweet

 

[Basilisk]

get a 1x pcie controller card and run a pata or sata or CF, whatever off of that and you can use the 4 onboard for the raid array.
:
One other thought I had was one of the small SSD PCIe cards, not sure if they are bootable, but a 16gb card running 2003 or 2008 would be sweet

I understand enthusiasm run rampant, but... WHY choose a high-speed solution for a system which doesn't care about s/w loading times?? You're original response -- get a pci-e card -- makes a world of sense... if you can ignore getting a graphics card.

That said, I'm not sure why anyone would care about keeping the O/S s/w off of the shared disks. If we're talking about 1-2TB disks, the O/S consumes a negligible portion... unless it prevents their disk's use in a RAID array. I agree with the earlier poster who wanted to use a USB stick for the O/S!

 

[Doomer]

Anybody know if loading WHS will delete all info already the drives other than the boot drive? what about drives added to a running system?

TIA

 

[H20cooled]

I understand enthusiasm run rampant, but... WHY choose a high-speed solution for a system which doesn't care about s/w loading times?? You're original response -- get a pci-e card -- makes a world of sense... if you can ignore getting a graphics card.

That said, I'm not sure why anyone would care about keeping the O/S s/w off of the shared disks. If we're talking about 1-2TB disks, the O/S consumes a negligible portion... unless it prevents their disk's use in a RAID array. I agree with the earlier poster who wanted to use a USB stick for the O/S!

I want the OS of the disks so that the Raid array can be 100% seperate from the OS, making it easier to deal with a failed drive. This way all 4 drives can be a single raid 5 array, no OS read/writes will effect the raid array performance, etc etc.

USB is just a bad choice for a windows OS, you can kill a usb drive just from the read/write cycles if you run a server OS from one 24/7.

I will not need a video card as RDP is what I use to access all my servers anyway. With a sata controller and notebook drives I will have more reliability vs a USB stick and I think I am going to run two 80gb 2.5" drives in raid 1 for the OS as there is plenty of room to make a smple mount for them..

 

[Emulex]

the raid is going to fail (Raid-5) with those drives - so smart move keeping the o/s separate. lol.

 

[H20cooled]

the raid is going to fail (Raid-5) with those drives - so smart move keeping the o/s separate. lol.

The notebook drives are for the OS. I am currently running 1TB Samsung F1 Raid Edition drives for the storage array so I think they can handle raid 5 just fine

 

[SunnyD]

Anybody know if loading WHS will delete all info already the drives other than the boot drive? what about drives added to a running system?

TIA

There's a "recovery" install option (though you need to do an interactive install for that, not blind automated install) that will reinstall WHS without repartitioning/formatting the drives. I believe it also automatically rebuilds the file system after install as well.

 

[Doomer]

Didn't say nothing about a "reinstall".

 

[SunnyD]

Didn't say nothing about a "reinstall".

http://social.microsoft.com/forums/en-US/whssoftware/thread/d2361600-a4d6-4b9b-ac72-91d62d8ed71e/

That's all I've got for you.

 

[Doomer]

http://social.microsoft.com/forums/en-US/whssoftware/thread/d2361600-a4d6-4b9b-ac72-91d62d8ed71e/

That's all I've got for you.

Thank you, sir. This tells me what I needed to know.

 

[Sionara]

I gave up on the headless install last week and ordered the riser and a low power PCI-E card.

Would this DoubleSight monitor work for this situation?
http://www.buy.com/prod/doublesight-...212323674.html

At least you could use it after the install...