I attempted to install WHS on a 64GB SSD. All was going well until I get the message about needing a drive at least 65GB in size. So I installed it on another larger, spare drive. But, I really want to use this SSD for my WHS. Would there be anything preventing me from imaging my current installation and transferring it to my SSD to use?
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WHS+small SSD
- Thread starter Jordan1
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I don't know if there's any WHS-specific limitations, I'm no expert on that, tho I've read a few posts about problems transferring stuff to the server when the OS drive is choked for space (both on the server and on the client system). As far as imaging an OS unto an SSD in general tho, you might wanna take a look at this thread as there's a few things to take into consideration. It's certainly possible, but you wanna make damn sure you do it right and not all closning/imaging apps will handle the process as they should.
from my understanding, WHS works differently from a normal OS.
its best to install the OS on a big drive, b/c when new data comes in its parsed on the OS drive until it gets shuffled off onto another drive for storage. the smaller the OS drive, the longer it takes to transfer new data.
its best to install the OS on a big drive, b/c when new data comes in its parsed on the OS drive until it gets shuffled off onto another drive for storage. the smaller the OS drive, the longer it takes to transfer new data.
That used to be the case, but it isn't true anymore. When you install WHS onto your system disk, the installer partitions it into two drives: a 20GB system partition (C: ) and your first data drive (D: ). As you add more drives to the pool, they all show up as being part of D. (Note that because of the way that WHS spans the D: drive across multiple disks, you shouldn't ever use the drive letter method of referring to files and directories stored in the pool. You need to use UNC paths instead, e.g. \\WHS\Videos\foo). WHS v1 used drive D: on physical disk 0 (the system disk) as the landing zone when new files were copied into the drive pool. With WHS PP1, this was changed to be the drive with the least amount of space. Later the files would likely be balanced to another drive. I've read that the thinking here was that groups of files would at least start off on the same physical disk. WHS PP2 (current, non-beta version) changed the process again. WHS now uses the drive with the most space as the landing zone for a given file. This assures that large files will get the best chance to be copied to a share. D: is where file tombstones are kept and, if your other pool drives fill up, it will start storing actual data there. I use a smallish (200-300GB) system disk because I keep a close watch on my pool size and am always ready to add a new drive if it starts to fill up.
As far as the OP's main question goes, I don't see any reason that you couldn't use a SSD drive vs any other type. I've never seen the 65GB minimum size error before, but the only thing I can think of is that WHS needs at least 45GB of pool space to start out with for some reason that I don't know about.
Honestly, you may want to use the SSD drive for something else, though. WHS systems aren't about speed as much as they are about making things easier. The drive extender system in WHS is a dog compared to any reasonable RAID 0 set-up.
Old Hippie
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I have mine on a 75GB Raptor and that's the smallest formatted drive you're going to get by with.
You may be able to shrink a WHS OS install image and trick it but I gotta tell ya, WHS is not the most R&D'd OS in the world and many of us have a hard time with it in it's natural state much less with any "mods".
My advice is to forget about it unless you have a lotta time on your hands.
Hmm...maybe I will just leave it as is with the 5k4 notebook drive I replaced it with. My goal with using the SSD was to have the server as a whole use the least amount of power possible and have something slightly more reliable than a standard hard drive, seeing how a failing WHS OS drive can be tricky to deal with.
Here's a shot of almost installing WHS on my 64GB SSD:
Here's a shot of almost installing WHS on my 64GB SSD: