Here you can find more about my Windows Home Server (WHS) setup and the parts I used to build the machine.
Hardware:
Mobo: Asus A8N-VM CSM Nvidia 6150 chipset
CPU: AMD64 4200+ X2
RAM: 3gigs(2 x 512mb, 2 x 1gig) Corsair DDR 400 PC3200
CASE: Antec Sonata II
HDD Enclosure: AMS 5 in 3 SATA module (gets me 5hdd slots in 3 5.25 cd rom bay drives)
Hard Drives: 2 x Western Digital 1TB green drives, 2 x Western Digital 640gig green drives, 3 x Seagate PATA/IED 500gig, 1 x Maxtor 500gig PATA/IDE, 1 x Seagate 500gig SATA (9 drives total, 1 OS, 8 Data, total capacity 5.26TB) 2 x WD 320gig IDE used for USB backup.
Controller card: Rosewill SATA HDD controller card
Software:
Operating System: Windows Home Server SP1
Add-ins: Disk Management, Dupe Cleaner, Advanded Amin Console, uTorrent, Jungle Disk
for more info see: We Got Served.
Build up Pics:
Shot of the SATA 5 in 3 HDD module
Close up of module
Home of WHS (Left) and HTPC (Right)
WHS Console
Another WHS console
I have been running WHS since the private beta testing days. I got in early and signed up for the beta test for WHS and was accepted and have been running WHS ever since. I use WHS to store all of my ripped DVD’s. Downloaded TV shows like Top Gear, as well as do nightly backups of each PC on my home network. I also run Jungle Disk (see add-ins above) to do nightly off site/online backups of my personal documents, as well as family photos, and home videos. I currently have about 25+ gigs backed up online with Jungle Disk/Amazon S3.
The things that drove me towards WHS was the ability to have multiple hdd’s that are storing the same folder of like content and still share it as a single folder share. For example I have 1.5TB of backed up movies, which spans across multiple HDD’s. Normally I would have to have multiple folder shares for each HDD, however with WHS it takes each HDD, with each folder that has shared DVD’s and then shares them all as a single folder which makes browsing the dvd folder much easier.
The other features to WHS like nightly backups of every PC on your network running the WHS client is another great feature. Right after I started using WHS, I had a hard drive die on my older laptop, and because I was running WHS and had it backing up the laptop, I was able to run out, pick up a new HDD, swap it out with the old one, get the bootable recovery CD for WHS, and in a few hours I was back up and running with the Laptop just like it was the night before. To me that paid for WHS ten fold right then and there.
The final feature is its sudo raid. I have 9 HDD’s in my WHS box. As you can see above in the specs list, I have HDD’s of varying sizes, and because of that I can’t to a traditional raid without loosing HDD space. So WHS pools the drives together and gives me one large usable file server storage. As part of that, it makes it extremely easy to remove a smaller, older HDD, and replace it with a larger, newer drive. So essentially you can keep up your WHS with the times and not loose out on needed HDD space.
