After finding out, by trial and error, that loading drivers during the first half of the install does nothing for the second half, I finally got Windows Home Server installed on the system previously known as NETSVR.
I had originally intended to install the OS on a 146GB 15K Seagate Cheetah hanging off of my PERC SAS5/iR, but I did not have a floppy disk anywhere in my house to load the drivers using the F6 method during the second half of the WHS install. I could have rigged up a thumb drive to do it, but I didn’t start this until about midnight (only free time I have with two small kids) and after fighting with it for an hour or more, I was too tired. I ended up installing on a 320GB WD drive set on a native SATA header. I just let the SAS drives get added to the pool.
In all, I ended up with a total of 1.31TB after moving all data that was not movies from my unRAID server. I am going to have to find some way to get rid of the Promise FastTrak100 TX2 that I have a couple of IDE drives hanging off of. They have shown up as missing a couple of times after rebooting and I’m afraid it has to do with some sort of compatibility with it. I had to setup each drive as an individual span in order for them to show up to the OS as there is no way to run that controller as a native IDE (non-RAID) adapter. I have an IDE>SATA adapter I can use for one and then I guess I can go buy another at some point.
Aside from all of that, I really do like WHS and I’m glad I decided to give it a chance. I’ve let it resume WINS services and it pretty much does everything the previous 2008 Server-based install did. I also installed WSUS on it and was able to take my ESXi system offline…a little less power used there.
I’m on a pretty vanilla install right now as I’ve not found any plugins that I felt were overly useful to me. The only one that I’ve installed so far is the P80 add-in. I’ve visited a few sites that have add-in lists and they all seem to carry about the same ones, so if you know any good secret add-ins, let me know about it.
I’m also considering starting an add-in page of my own to compliment the Media Center plugin index. I just don’t know if I have the time for an undertaking of that extent right now…we’ll see.
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Jon-
Great post so far!!! I’ve been using WHS for about 6 months now and love it! Luckily, I haven’t had to do a restore of a machine yet but I feel confident that the data is stored on WHS.
I’m looking forward to the add-ins that you find.
Disk Management and Grid Junction are two add ins I use that I like. I also plan on installing WHS Health and Remote Notification when I have a sec. Although not an add in I have Subsonic installed on my WHS which is great for remote streaming of my music. You can find some good addins:
http://www.mediasmartserver.net/add-ins/
http://www.whsplus.com/
I probably wouldn’t bother putting together a WHS Addin list since there are already plenty of sites that have and there is actually an Add In in the works that will show all available add ins via the WHS Console (http://www.homeserverland.com/blogs/b/hslblog/archive/2009/12/12/first-look-add-in-central.aspx)
Cheers
Damian
I’m probably going to use the Disk Management add-in and I also saw a file manager that may come in handy. As far as the add-in list goes, I also think I’ll probably pass the more I think about it.