Just set up a WHS, should I start over?

S

Sprtfan

Limp Gawd
Joined
Aug 23, 2007
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I just set up a WHS and have most of my data moved over to it but it would not be that hard to do again. I used a 640 GB drive for the boot drive and several 1 TB drives for the data pool. After I was finished I read that it is best to use your largest drive for the boot drive because moving it over to a larger drive is a real pain. I normally wouldn't bother buy I just got a few 1.5 TB drives and it would be best to replace the 640 GB. So I guess what I'm asking is, would it be easier to start from scratch or would it still be easier to replace the boot drive and leave the data pool alone?
 
It isn't the big deal that it used to be, especially now that tools exist to migrate data off the system drive if things end up there instead of the storage pool. I'm using a 500GB drive for the OS and it works fine as long as you don't try to copy over 500GB at a time.
 
Sprtfan said:
After I was finished I read that it is best to use your largest drive for the boot drive because moving it over to a larger drive is a real pain.
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why would one need to move it (the system drive) over to a larger drive?

my system drive is "only" 320gig and my data drives are all 1TB
works perfectly well.
my system drive stays at around 75% full.

if it ain't broke don't fix it.
 
depends on your case and port constraints.

if you only have 4 ports and bays, and dont want to expand or change cases, then having a smallish system disk can be a pain for your overall capacity.

if ports or bays or case size is not a constraint, it doesnt matter, you're fine as is.
 
Replace the boot drive.
This is not as big an issue as it used to be but, I would still replace the boot drive as it is the smallest.
 
CopyThat said:
Replace the boot drive.
This is not as big an issue as it used to be but, I would still replace the boot drive as it is the smallest.
Click to expand...

I disagree. Not worth the time/effort. Replace when/if it fails or you move to WHS2. WHS, as long as you have a reasonable amount of drives, avoids the "OS drive" as much as possible. It will only put data there if there is no other place. In most cases, if your OS drive is filling, you have other issues you need to start worrying about. ;)
 
The only reason to upgrade it to the largest drive is so you dont have to do it later.
Switching the OS drive can be a PITA.

Id prob just wait. until you have to do it though
 
I have 8 sata spots on the Mobo and I'm using 5 of them. I'm using a Coolermaster 690 case and it only has room for 5 drives with out using the 5.25" Drive Bays. Maybe the best choice is to buy a drive bay adapter, add the new drives and leave everything else the same. Thanks for the input.
 
Asposium said:
why would one need to move it (the system drive) over to a larger drive?

my system drive is "only" 320gig and my data drives are all 1TB
works perfectly well.
my system drive stays at around 75% full.

if it ain't broke don't fix it.
Click to expand...

I was going to make the switch so I could maximize my storage down the road. I didn't want to be forced to keep a smaller drive that would make my data pool smaller.
 
It really depends on whether you think you are going to need to replace the system drive at some point for more space. My WHS is housed in a Aerocool Masstige with plenty of room for new drives so I probably won't ever need to upgrade my system drives. For that reason, I went with 2 250 GB drives in a RAID1 setup (after a failed 500 GB drive resulted in a complete reinstall of WHS). After SP2 they got rid of the "landing zone" issue, so I've never run into an issue of trying to copy too much data at one time.
 
Trepidati0n said:
I disagree. Not worth the time/effort. Replace when/if it fails or you move to WHS2. WHS, as long as you have a reasonable amount of drives, avoids the "OS drive" as much as possible. It will only put data there if there is no other place. In most cases, if your OS drive is filling, you have other issues you need to start worrying about. ;)
Click to expand...

I'm with ya, I was kind of projecting my own setup onto his, I have all my ports used so...when I get a new, bigger drive, they come out smallest first, OS drive or no OS drive.
I was thinking he could image the OS drive and drop it on the bigger one. Which is what i would do.
I definitely see your point though.
 
The only reason to replace the OS drive after you've done your migration is if it dies. Really. There is no need for a 1tb landing zone. If you will only ever have 4 drives in your system, then it may make some sense to get a larger drive, but if you will be adding more down the road, who cares as 640gb is still large.
 
IIRC, WHS PP1 did away with the landing zone, instead placing files directly to the drive pool.
 
Neb said:
IIRC, WHS PP1 did away with the landing zone, instead placing files directly to the drive pool.
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Exactly, which makes swapping the 640 out almost pointless, unless you really need a larger drive there.

My current setup has a 640 for the sys drive, 2 1000 drives, and 2 750's.
 
Basically boils down to whether you are trying to get every possible bit of drive space out of the case you have available. If you don't mind, then it's not worth the effort :)
 
CopyThat said:
I'm with ya, I was kind of projecting my own setup onto his, I have all my ports used so...when I get a new, bigger drive, they come out smallest first, OS drive or no OS drive.
I was thinking he could image the OS drive and drop it on the bigger one. Which is what i would do.
I definitely see your point though.
Click to expand...



I thought that there was some reason why you couldn't image the OS drive to a different one and have it work right with WHS? If this is not the case, it would not be hard to use acronis true image and then use the bigger drive. Will this work?
 
Sprtfan said:
I thought that there was some reason why you couldn't image the OS drive to a different one and have it work right with WHS? If this is not the case, it would not be hard to use acronis true image and then use the bigger drive. Will this work?
Click to expand...

I've used acronis to move my install to another drive before. I had to do a repair install afterwards, but it worked.
 
huskerpat said:
I've used acronis to move my install to another drive before. I had to do a repair install afterwards, but it worked.
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If you had to do a repair install then it didnt work.
You might as well have put in a blank disk and done the repair install.
 
nitrobass24 said:
If you had to do a repair install then it didnt work.
You might as well have put in a blank disk and done the repair install.
Click to expand...

Last time I did a repair install it deleted the partitions on all of my data drives and I lost 7tb worth of stuff... 2 weeks of data recovery was not fun.
 
Yea I remember that.

I was trying to tell someone that in Genmay eariler cause they were gonna use a 80gb OS disk and then just reinstall later down the road.
Terrible Idea.
 
So, it sounds like moving it to a new disk using acronis true image is not a good idea?
 
Once you have a working WHS leave it alone. You can easily add extra storage thru external drives or a controller card to add more drives, port multiplier etc. A server reinstall is a pain and can take a long time depending on the size of your data. All the addins are nice but remember WHS was not designed so you could muck about with it, just let it run and do its primary job.
 
well yea thats the point of a repair.

But if you imaged it, and then repaired you just added a second step.
you might as well have just repaired in the first place.

The point of imaging is to avoid that repair step.
 
In theory imaging should work as long as you make the drive image while the system is offline. Using acronis while the system is running means there could be a slight change in files between the time you image and when you shut it down which could cause problems. Either way I don't think I have heard of a single image/migration that worked successfully this way though.
 
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