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Windows Home Server 99 bucks

Wow - excellent deal. It was running a lot higher than that when it first came out. Plus, it's a rather high-quality bit of software. 🙂
 
Wow I sprung for this at its previous price a few months ago and am very happy with its functionality. It integrates well with the Xbox360 for streaming music and movies to my home theater A/V system and I use it to serve up my music library to a Squeezebox Boom with no glitches. Its back-up and file-server functions have been flawless so far.
 
This version (Power Pack) has the fix for data corruption already on the disc. Anyone who was a bit weary after hearing about using multiple drives and data corruption for Windows Home Server can pick up this nice and cheap server(like) OS without any worry.

 
I just wished it had Media Center in it because i'd buy it.

I currently use Vista Premium (which at the time was just as expensive).
 
I ordered this but have a question about it being OEM. What if my mobo or other piece of my server(old P4 desktop ) goes out, will I be able to replace the hardware?
 
While it is hardly a definitive answer, I replaced the whole computer that it was running on, and didn't have any problem activating it on the new hardware.
 
Originally posted by: coolVariable
Any good 'el cheapo' computers that this could be put on?
Preferrably low power consumption.
Click to expand...
My favorite right now is the MSI Wind barebones PC ($150). It's a box with an Intel Atom-based motherboard and an external 60 Watt power supply (plenty). All you add is a DVD drive, a stick of RAM, and a single SATA hard drive. With a 640 GB hard drive installed, mine draws 30 watts.

The one "problem" is that it's only built for a single hard drive. If you want drive redundancy, the Wind isn't for you. As a backup server, or if you make backups of your server to a USB drive, then it's fine as long as you don't need more than 1.5 TB of drive space. 1.5 TB goes a long way in backups, since files that are duplicated in multiple PCs (like Windows, MS Office, and other applications) are only backed up once for the entire network.
 
The top reviewe at newegg says that it doesn't support RAID, but then goes on to say that he added an internal RAID card. Can I take this as him saying WHS doesn't support RAID for onboard controllers and will allow you to run disks in RAID as long as the RAID card is an add-on?
 
Originally posted by: Garet Jax
The top reviewe at newegg says that it doesn't support RAID, but then goes on to say that he added an internal RAID card. Can I take this as him saying WHS doesn't support RAID for onboard controllers and will allow you to run disks in RAID as long as the RAID card is an add-on?
Click to expand...

My 3ware 9650SE works just fine in it.
 
Originally posted by: Garet Jax
The top reviewe at newegg says that it doesn't support RAID, but then goes on to say that he added an internal RAID card. Can I take this as him saying WHS doesn't support RAID for onboard controllers and will allow you to run disks in RAID as long as the RAID card is an add-on?
Click to expand...

It's not as much about "supporting" RAID and MS is wanting people you use the "Drive Extender" and "Duplication" features within WHS. This works out to a kind of software RAID 1 (mirrored) array without the need for special hardware or the need for identical capacity harddrives. If you go to with We Got Served ( http://www.wegotserved.co.uk/ ) or the WHS Forums at Microsoft ( http://social.microsoft.com/Fo...ory/WindowsHomeServer/ ) we will see the are a number of people using either motherboard based or hardware RAID setups. I think MS is just saying it isn't necessary for WHS. While this maybe true, some don't want to lose the storage capacity that the WHS psuedo-RAID 1 feature gives. Hence the desire for RAID 5. On the other hand, with WHS you can specify which files/folders you want to protect with the "Duplication" feature thereby limiting your storage requirements. This isn't possible with software/hardware RAID 5. If the data is on the RAID array it's on it.

Right now, I'm looking to set up a motherboard based RAID 1 array for the main harddrive (holding the OS) and let WHS take care of the rest utilizing the "Duplication". We'll just have to see how it works out.

By the way, I have contacted 3ware and Areca about drives for WHS. Both said they don't have any but you could try the either the XP, Vista, Server 2003 or Server 2008. As noted by the previous post, this certainly can work.

Here is Areca reply to my question:
Dear Sir,

we don't have a driver package specially designed for this Windows edition.
we have driver for XP, 2003, Vista and 2008. if your OS compatible with any one of them, you will able to use the driver for your system.

as i known, the home server is developed based on 2003, if there have no any special limitation, you should able to use the 2003 driver on it.
or you can also contact with MS for more detail about this OS ability and limitations
Click to expand...
 
Originally posted by: Sawyer
I ordered this but have a question about it being OEM. What if my mobo or other piece of my server(old P4 desktop ) goes out, will I be able to replace the hardware?
Click to expand...

I am not sure if the activation works the same way as it does in Vista or XP but from my experience, the activation reseets after a year or so and in your case, would not be a problem as long as you have not installed it within a year prior.
 
Originally posted by: coolVariable
Any good 'el cheapo' computers that this could be put on?
Preferrably low power consumption.
Click to expand...

You should take a look at this thread at SPCR. Lots of good info there. I wouldn't recommend the Wind just yet, while the Atom seems like a pretty good processor the DG45FC chipset it comes with seems to be quite buggy. This is what i am building

Mobo
GIGABYTE GA-MA74GM-S2H

CPU
AMD Sempron LE 1250

PSU
PicoPSU 120.

I have a old case and spare hard drives lying around and plan to be using those. People with similar config seem to be running it at 22 watts idle.
 
Originally posted by: nyker96
hope they fixed file corruption problems heard so much about. For a file server this is big problem.
Click to expand...

That was fixed when "Power Pack 1" came out and for most people it wasn't a serious problem. The issue only occurred when the server was under high load and you opened one of several specific file types directly off of the server and then made edits over the network. It's not like you would wake up one day and files that you were storing would randomly have been corrupted.
 
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