WHS/HTPC/Workstation

[MetalDwarf]

My main PC essentially acts as a media center connected to my projector and speakers. I use it sitting on the couch, for all intents and purposes it is a HTPC, but I use it for email, web surfing, gaming, yadda yadda. I am currently running Vista Ultimate.

I want to buy some more hard drives but the drives I have now are starting to get unruly as it is.
2x500gb
2x320gb
I want to buy 2x1TB drives.

I like the drive pool that WHS offers, I also like its psudo-raid backup capabilities.

What I am wondering is can WHS be used as a workstation/HTPC in a pinch.
I DONT use a frontend so no Sage/BeyondTV/MCE no media recording.

I DO use: VLC, Winamp, WMP. to play media, gaming (L4D, HL2 etc)

An alternative would be a way to get around the 6 drives/partition. Is there any easy way to make windows see all 6 drives as JBOD? Without destroying the 1.6TB of data I already have on the current disks?

 

[Dangman]

What I am wondering is can WHS be used as a workstation/HTPC in a pinch.
....

An alternative would be a way to get around the 6 drives/partition. Is there any easy way to make windows see all 6 drives as JBOD? Without destroying the 1.6TB of data I already have on the current disks?

Well you probably can't install games on WHS but Winamp, VLC and WMP might be possible. I'll try installing those apps later tonight when I get home on my own WHS server.

As for that second question, this might be of some help:

Dynamic disks and volumesDynamic disks provide features that basic disks
do not, such as the ability to create volumes that span multiple disks
(spanned and striped volumes), and the ability to create fault tolerant
volumes (mirrored and RAID-5 volumes). All volumes on dynamic disks are
known as dynamic volumes.

There are five types of dynamic volumes: simple, spanned, striped, mirrored,
and RAID-5. Mirrored and RAID-5 volumes are fault tolerant and are
available only on computers running Windows 2000 Server, Windows 2000
Advanced Server, Windows 2000 Datacenter Server, or Windows XP.
However, you can use a computer running Windows XP Professional to
create mirrored and RAID-5 volumes on these operating systems.

Regardless of whether the dynamic disk uses the master boot record (MBR)
or GUID partition table (GPT) partition style, you can create up to 2,000
dynamic volumes per disk group, although the recommended number of
dynamic volumes is 32 or less per disk.

For information about managing dynamic volumes, see Manage dynamic
volumes.

Limitations of dynamic disks and dynamic volumes
When using dynamic volumes, the following limitations apply:

When installing Windows XP Professional. If a dynamic volume is created
from unallocated space on a dynamic disk, you cannot install Windows XP
Professional on that volume. However, you can extend the volume (if it is a
simple or spanned volume). This setup limitation occurs because Windows
XP Professional Setup recognizes only dynamic volumes that have an entry
in the partition table.
Portable computers. Dynamic disks are not supported on portable
computers, removable disks, detachable disks that use Universal Serial Bus
(USB) or IEEE 1394 (also called FireWire) interfaces, or on disks connected
to shared SCSI buses. If you are using a portable computer and right-click a disk in the graphical or list view in Disk Management, you will not see the
option to convert the disk to dynamic.
Dual-boot computers. Dynamic volumes (and the data they contain) cannot
be accessed by, or created on, computers running MS-DOS, Windows 95,
Windows 98, Windows Millennium Edition, Windows NT 4.0, or Windows XP
Home Edition that are configured to dual-boot with Windows XP
Professional or Windows XP. If you want computers running these operating
systems to be able to access the data, store the data on basic volumes
instead. For information about basic volumes, see Basic disks and volumes.
When extending a volume. If a basic volume is converted to dynamic (by
converting a basic disk to dynamic), it may or may not have an entry in the
partition table depending on whether that volume was a system or boot
partition. If the converted volume was a system or boot partition it retains
an entry in the partition table. You can install Windows XP Professional on
the volume, but you cannot extend it. If the converted volume was not a
system or boot volume it does not have an entry in the partition table. You
cannot install Windows XP Professional on the volume, but you can extend
it.
On Windows 2000, volumes converted from partitions have an entry in the
partition table. On Windows XP Professional, volumes converted from
partitions do not have an entry in the partition table unless the partitions
were system or boot partitions. In Disk Management, you can see if a
volume has an entry in the partition table by right-clicking the volume. If
Extend Volume is disabled, the volume has an entry in the partition table.


You can install Windows XP Professional only on simple and mirrored dynamic
volumes, and these volumes must have entries in the partition table (which
means that these volumes were system or boot volumes).

 

[nitrobass24]

This isnt really recommended, but I guess it would work.

You can install anything, that would normally install on server 2003.
WHS is really just a bolt on application to SBS 2003.

 

[Archer75]

^what he said.

But I wouldn't do it. You trust WHS with your data so i'd leave it alone to do just that. I'd get a seperate machine for WHS.
I don't like having a bunch of apps running on my server. I don't want to introduce any sort of risk to the machine that is protecting and housing my data. Yeah, maybe i'm being paranoid. But WHS doesn't need much horse power and i'm using 6 year old hardware to run my server and it works great.

 

[criccio]

If you have enough RAM in you're box and don't mind leaving a VM running full time, install WHS in a VM and make the storage drives directly available to it as local disks.

Personally, I wouldn't want to do it that way, but it IS a possibility.

I would build a small, inexpensive NAS and run WHS on that.

wegotserved.co.uk FTW.

 

[MrSmegzabush]

I just built my 1st WHS machine last week, and took 5tb of stuff off my HTPC, and put it on the server. I second everybody on using a second machine for reliability, and w/ hardware being so cheap, it makes sense when you have data you want to protect. I Just built my machine out of my old desktop Abit IP35 board, w/ 7 HDDs in it. I got a new APC UPS for it that says I am using 110-120 idle w/ all the drives spinning. I run the machine 24/7, and all I do on it is host files and download on that machine.

 

[Dangman]

I got a new APC UPS for it that says I am using 110-120 idle w/ all the drives spinning. I run the machine 24/7, and all I do on it is host files and download on that machine.

UPS readings are very inaccurate. From the PSU editor here:

Yes and a quick search would turn up this topic a million times over. Here is the recap:

1) APFC can fool Kill-A-Watts into giving you abnormally low readings (some times giving better than 100% efficiency)

2) Power supplies derate with temperature anywhere from 2w/c above a nominal rated at value to 10w/c.

3) Kill-A-Watt's and most power meters sample too slowly to catch transient loads (the Transient load from our tests is 117w and is COMPLETELY missed by Kill-A-Watts).

4) Power supplies last longer if you stay in the 40% to 60% range of their output.

5) power supplies are quieter if you stay in the 40% to 60% range of their output.

6) Power supplies are cooler if you stay in the 40% to 60% range of their output.

The power meters in UPS software are just as bad. You have to spend some change before you get anywhere near an accurate power meter when your PSU has APFC.