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help me understand WHS disc management

T

ThePiston

Senior member
(unless I' mistaken) I don't like the fact that WHS doesn't allow you to install it on a dedicated OS drive and then use a raided data drive.

From wat I have read, WHS installs itself over the entire span of your drives.

My questions is this: is it at all possible to set up a raided data-only drive in Windows Home Server? I just don't like to think of the OS on my data drive at all.

If not, can someone convince me that it is safe to install the WHS OS on the data drive? How does it back up the data? Does it allow raid?
 
I don't own it, so either I guess, but probably 2011.

What would happen if I installed WHS without the data drive (onto an 80GB SSD) and then later added the data drive? Would it incorporate the raided drive partition into the D : drive of WHS or add it as an E: drive?
 
ThePiston said:
(unless I' mistaken) I don't like the fact that WHS doesn't allow you to install it on a dedicated OS drive and then use a raided data drive.

From wat I have read, WHS installs itself over the entire span of your drives.

My questions is this: is it at all possible to set up a raided data-only drive in Windows Home Server? I just don't like to think of the OS on my data drive at all.

If not, can someone convince me that it is safe to install the WHS OS on the data drive? How does it back up the data? Does it allow raid?
Click to expand...

Yes to both versions. I have raid cards in both my WHS machines (V1 and V2). All I did was install the OS without the raid drives powered on. Once OS is installed, reboot while turning on the drives and it will show up as a drive in My Computer but it will not be in the drive pool. You can create shares on the array and they will be accessible to others. THey will not however be in the drive pool and the folder duplication will not work on the raid drive. If you add the array to the drive pool, it will format and initialize them.

Same holds true for WHS 2011 so far but I've only been playing with it for a few weeks.
 
ok, so if I want the drives in the drive pool, I should copy the data to another drive, install WHS OS onto a single drive (without raid drives connected), add the drives and allow WHS to format and add them to the pool, then copy data back onto them.

sound good?
 
if a drive fails it will not lose data. I don't understand folder duplication, but I'm assuming it spans across multiple drives. the raided solution would protect against drive failure
 
ThePiston said:
if a drive fails it will not lose data. I don't understand folder duplication, but I'm assuming it spans across multiple drives. the raided solution would protect against drive failure
Click to expand...
Folder duplication is a higher level form of redundancy similar to RAID 1. Rather than duplicating blocks across drives, it duplicates files*. WHS can still put files on whatever drive it wants, but with FD turned on there will always be 2 copies (on different drives) of any file set to be duplicated.

* I don't know why it's called Folder Duplication, considering it's turned on per share...
 
ThePiston said:
so I assume WHS cuts your space in half if you turn on Folder Duplication?
Click to expand...

yes. As does raid mirroring.
If you're literally doing 2 drives for storage (and a 3rd for OS) then I'd say go with folder duplication. This way if there just happens to be a directory or two you don't care about "backing up" ten you don't duplicate it and you save some space.
 
ViRGE said:
Folder duplication is a higher level form of redundancy similar to RAID 1. Rather than duplicating blocks across drives, it duplicates files*. WHS can still put files on whatever drive it wants, but with FD turned on there will always be 2 copies (on different drives) of any file set to be duplicated.

* I don't know why it's called Folder Duplication, considering it's turned on per share...
Click to expand...

I think because you turn it on per "shared folder"
so your saying, "Everything in this 'shared folder' I want duplicated to a 2nd HDD"
 
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