WHS on a CF card?

[SunnyD]

Is this a bad idea? I recall a few people trying Windows (in general) out on CF cards and essentially killing them, but WHS is more of a steady-state OS without a ton of random user initiated processes. Would a CF card be suitable, or is that asking for problems?

 

[Gillbot]

I ran XP for a bit on one, no issues but I didn't leave ir run for an extended timeframe. I used it as a BT downloader and fileserver though.

 

[JackMDS]

1. WHS needs minimum 80 GB drive.

2. WHS never sleeps and is on 24/7 so the CF will not last long.

If size is the issue 500GB 2.5" SATA in an enclosure is Not so big.

 

[SunnyD]

1. WHS needs minimum 80 GB drive.

2. WHS never sleeps and is on 24/7 so the CF will not last long.

If size is the issue 500GB 2.5" SATA in an enclosure is Not so big.

- 80GB for the primary/system drive? That's a bit much.

- I believe there's a plugin for WHS that supports idle sleep now. But again, not sure if that would end up putting more wear on the card or not.

- This is an SS4200 NAS, 4 SATA drives to back it up. I was just wondering out loud... 🙂

 

[ZetaEpyon]

- 80GB for the primary/system drive? That's a bit much.

- I believe there's a plugin for WHS that supports idle sleep now. But again, not sure if that would end up putting more wear on the card or not.

- This is an SS4200 NAS, 4 SATA drives to back it up. I was just wondering out loud... 🙂

I think the disk requirement was actually lowered to 64GB at some point, probably one of the Power Packs; not that it helps all that much. Anyway, WHS splits the system drive into two partitions: one for the OS, and a second as the first data partition.

The real problem is that the keystones for the WHS shares are placed onto this secondary partition. So, even if you're not running weird background processes and such, any time you do stuff with files on the shares, the keystones (which would be on the CF) will probably get modified as well.

If you're using the backup features of WHS, I believe those get put onto the D partition by default as well.

Imo, it would probably work OK for a while, but when it fails, you'll have to deal with the hassle of rebuilding the keystones from the storage pool, since those would be lost when the CF fails.

I agree with Jack that if size or power is the concern here, a 2.5" laptop drive would be better suited to the task (though I'd get one smaller than 500GB, personally). Or even a cheap-ish SSD, provided it's large enough.

 

[SunnyD]

The real problem is that the keystones for the WHS shares are placed onto this secondary partition. So, even if you're not running weird background processes and such, any time you do stuff with files on the shares, the keystones (which would be on the CF) will probably get modified as well.

Ah, okay. That's what I wanted to know. I'll just end up letting WHS use the physical drives then. It was just a thought. 🙂