WHS 2011 or older version? Only want drive extender and duplication.

[mazeroth]

I am building a WHS computer in the next few days and still can't decide whether to get the new version or stick with the last one. I 100% want drive extender and seeing how they did away with it for 2011 pisses me off. I did read about some 3rd party companies that offer drive extension capabilities but do these really work well? Should I just stick with the last version? My plan, for now, is two 2TB internals and two 2TB external USB drives that backup nightly.

Connected to this will be my main gaming PC, laptop wirelessly, HTPC and a music only computer hooked up to the whole house audio system. I will store my ripped movies, home videos, pictures and music. I want drive extender so everything can be in one location so if I were to run out of space I wouldn't have to worry about putting half the movies on one drive and the other half on another.

Thanks in advance.

 

[ViRGE]

All of the 3rd party solutions are still in beta and should not be used if you're at all concerned about losing your data. Thus if you want DE features right now, you should go with WHS v1.

 

[JackMDS]

http://www.pcworld.com/article/228598/windows_home_server_2011_what_it_is_and_how_to_use_it.html

 

[VirtualLarry]

http://www.pcworld.com/article/228598/windows_home_server_2011_what_it_is_and_how_to_use_it.html

WHS2011 has no support for GPT partitions? WTF? What's the freaking point, if you cannot use the larger HDs on this newer WHS platform? What the hell is MS smoking, it must not be very good weed.

 

[ViRGE]

WHS2011 has no support for GPT partitions? WTF? What's the freaking point, if you cannot use the larger HDs on this newer WHS platform? What the hell is MS smoking, it must not be very good weed.

That doesn't sound right. WHS2011 should support GPT.

 

[Geofram]

I just got done upgrading my WHS server to 2011. It honestly runs better, in my opinion - things like the dashboard actually load a lot faster.

My feelings of it aside, I'd bring up one issue you'll run into with the old one (and the main reason I upgraded). WHS doesn't support Advanced Format hard drives very well. Personally, mine started blue screening randomly after I added one. So as you up your disks in the old OS (which is based on 2003 server) be careful if you're adding Advanced Format drives. MS officially recommends that you don't install them at all.

WHS 2011 uses them fine. I have had zero stability problems after swapping over.

 

[mazeroth]

My big reason for wanting drive extender is so I can have all my movies in one folder named "Movies". These will be loaded into Windows Media Center on my HTPC. I've never done this before so correct me if I'm wrong. Can I just tell WMC that I have my movies in multiple locations (different drives) and it will still put them in the same movies directory? If so, I really don't need drive extender if WMC makes them all appear on the same movies screen.

 

[BTA]

WHS v1 works great for me and I use the 2tb advanced format Samsung drives.

I've got a test box setup with WHS 2011 on it that I'm using to test the third party drive extender solutions on...so far none of them are production ready imo. 2011 itself seems fine, not a huge leap forward for my uses though.

My primary concern on my server is drive pooling and data duplication, and pc backups. All of which work great on WHS v1.

 

[BTA]

My big reason for wanting drive extender is so I can have all my movies in one folder named "Movies". These will be loaded into Windows Media Center on my HTPC. I've never done this before so correct me if I'm wrong. Can I just tell WMC that I have my movies in multiple locations (different drives) and it will still put them in the same movies directory? If so, I really don't need drive extender if WMC makes them all appear on the same movies screen.

Are you using MyMovies or MediaBrowser or are you just going to use the built in Movies part of WMC?

WMC lets you add any number of media locations, so if you added multiple shares that all have movie rips in them, then it will show up in the same place in the WMC menu.

MyMovies would be a little more difficult, but really you'd just have to change the location that it rips movies to once you filled up a drive.

MediaBrowser I have not used so I don't know if that would make any difference.

 

[mazeroth]

WMC lets you add any number of media locations, so if you added multiple shares that all have movie rips in them, then it will show up in the same place in the WMC menu.

Perfect, that's exactly what I need to know. It looks like WHS 2011 is going to do the trick.

 

[Reliant]

Not to hijack but I guess this is the time...I am using V1 right now, it does the job. I am also using drive extender...does anyone have a good upgrade path? Did you use hardware raid? JBOD? What? Also, where did you temporarily store your data for that transition? I'm not really sure how I should proceed!

 

[Bish]

Not to hijack but I guess this is the time...I am using V1 right now, it does the job. I am also using drive extender...does anyone have a good upgrade path? Did you use hardware raid? JBOD? What? Also, where did you temporarily store your data for that transition? I'm not really sure how I should proceed!

I went with hardware raid6 when I migrated from whs v1 to v1. But then again, my v1 was hardware raid5. I built a new machine so I just kept them on my network and copied them over.

 

[Gooberlx2]

I like the idea of flexraid, but the last time I experimented with it performance and stability were really shoddy.

 

[saitoh183]

what version of Flexraid was it...becasue since version 2.0 preview 8, its alot better ...im using it right now in my WHS2011 box and in VM it ran great