Windows Home Server Setup

[Blazer]

What would be the best way to setup the hard drives, among other things i would like to avoid a failed WHS OS!

as a std Hd, with larger storage drives

as a raid 1,5,10 or matrix ?

reading the many post around the web only leads to more confusion, esp with the talk of data corruption, whats that about, apparently a know problem, how could i avoid that happening.

i have installed the WHS OS trail package to take the test drive, all new to me!

any suggestions would be greatly apreciated.

 

[atbnet]

I think one of the data corruption problems comes from people trying to use the shared drive as storage for things like uTorrent. The corruption comes from pretty specific events. I plan on building a WHS as soon as it supports x64, but I plan on using a spare Raptor drive as the main drive then I plan on purchasing one or two 1 TB drives for the storage and/or mirroring them. You do not need to set up a RAID because when you add a drive to the system, Windows just allocates it into a large D: drive but you can setup redundency so Windows puts a copy on all your drives.

 

[stash]

Don't do RAID, it will just make things more complicated for no reason. Let the drive extender algorithms do their job on JBOD.

Really the only recommendations are to have more than one drive, and to make the OS drive the biggest drive. This is because the max file size you can copy to a WHS is limited by the size of the data (d partition on the system drive, regardless of the size of the other disks in the system.

 

[Blazer]

can the pc backup portion of WHS restore the OS to a new hard drive for my laptop and other pc's in my home network.

used as a home server for storage of data, music and video files is it really needed to have a virus software installed, as any files that are put onto the server would have been scanned by the other pc's.

 

[stash]

can the pc backup portion of WHS restore the OS to a new hard drive for my laptop and other pc's in my home network.

Yes.

used as a home server for storage of data, music and video files is it really needed to have a virus software installed, as any files that are put onto the server would have been scanned by the other pc's.

I don't have A/V installed on my WHS, but I believe there are WHS specific A/V products available.

 

[RebateMonger]

Originally posted by: blazer
used as a home server for storage of data, music and video files is it really needed to have a virus software installed, as any files that are put onto the server would have been scanned by the other pc's.

In general, it depends what you do with the Server, whether there's a firewall on the Server, and how well protected the rest of your PCs are.

The biggest danger to a Server is using it for web browsing. Keep browsing to a minimum. Preferably, only access the Web to get Microsoft Updates, from Microsoft's site only.

The second biggest danger is from contaminated PCs on your network. They may try to propogate a worm onto the Server. Running an inbound firewall on the Server, using common sense on the other PCs, and maintaining updated AV software on the other PCs will go a long way to protect the Server.

 

[Blazer]

My home network uses a wired/wireless router that has been setup with the security features and password enabled, it also requires a psk [with encryption] to get access to the router, only myself and mywife have the ability to connect to wireless.

i have NO intention of the WHS ever getting acess to the internet, it will never be used directly other than setup by myself only, it will be much latter before i even consider acessing the server from a remote location [much latter], both of us are carefull browsers on the internet anyway and keep our personal pc's updated as far as windows and a/v's progs, all our rugrats have grown and gone! so no prob there.

our use of the server would be for clean backups that i would do myself after i know the system being backed up is clean, storing our collection of purchased DVD movies and music files that i hope can be connected to our entertainment center and dish network DVR reciever that is network capable.

the WHS is running as it was installed from the MS DVD's, when PP1 get released i will update it then.

as a user of acronis true image i was wondering if it was safe/or needed to install onto the server for scheduled backups of the server OS in case of a power failure or surge that may leave the server OS damaged to allow for quick recovery, i am unsure as to how the OS would act with such a prog installed and scheduled for OS image backups to an internal/external hard drive.

 

[stash]

WHS has two installation options, clean install and recovery. Recovery will attempt to preserve your data and just install a clean copy of the OS on the 20GB system partition. You have to recreate any non-default shares and your user accounts, as well as reinstall any apps, but it works well.

PP1 will include the ability to backup the data on your server (including the backup database) to an external drive.

I don't know if a product like Acronis would work with WHS.