Anyway, I’m aware the ports could be forwarded manually, but it just never worked for me. No matter what I tried. Call me stupid, but I could not get WHS to “just work”, yet Linux somehow does. Go figure. :)

I’ll always remain open to changes though. If Microsoft can fix the few nagging issues I had with WHS, then I’d probably go back. The management console was rather slick, and I like all the concepts in theory. But the release candidates just never quite delivered what Microsoft was promising IMO.

In regards to the port forwarding shenanigans of Home Server, you can manually port forward the required ports for remote desktop. In fact, I’m pretty sure the system will give you the necessary ports to forward if it finds it can’t do it itself.

I tried out WHS in the Release Candidate stage mainly because I wanted to add the automated remote access and backups to my fileserver (which was previously running Gentoo Linux). Unfortunately, automated backups never worked for me for some reason. Despite the fact I was running Vista on my desktop, it would just get to around 10% and then claim the computer was turned off mid backup (despite the fact I’ve turned the shitty automatic sleep options off). I think I got it to back up my laptop once, then it never worked again. And then a few days later it claims the backup database was corrupted and didn’t leave me with any easy option to repair.

Funnily enough, the backups worked better than the remote access, which I in fact couldn’t get to work at all. Mainly because my IPCop firewall doesn’t have a UPnP feature, and WHS provides no facilities for manual port forwarding. Even when I tried with a UPnP capable router (Linksys WRT54GL running DD-WRT), remote access was still a no-go.

So now I had a fileserver which was slow and always thrashing the hard drives trying to “balance” them (of which I had about 5 or 6 from memory at the time). I had to live in fear of the data corruption bug popping up with some obscure program, and none of the features I actually needed from WHS actually worked. So at this point it was banished from my server and once again replaced with Linux, which - surprise surprise - just worked. The only problem I’ve had is a software RAID 1 array mysteriously dropping out over the weekend, but a quick reboot revived it to the point where I could make a full backup of the drive. I suspect the cheap Silicon Image controller is at fault (though it’s only acting as a straight SATA controller with Linux doing the RAID work through mdadm).

Basically, from the end user point of view - when they slap a second, third and fourth drive into the system, it just adds to the total storage pool. Drives don’t have to be of the same size at all, it just adds to the total storage pool. The “biggest drive should be your system” rule is for DIY builds, when you first set the thing up. If you go with an OEM solution, you’re stuck with whatever initial drive the OEM gives you.

The reason behind the largest-drive rule is simple: when you have multiple drives, anything you copy to the server is placed on the initial data drive (the first drive in the system, minus 20GB for the SYS volume), and a service called Drive Migrator then moves that data off onto another drive, and makes a link on that first drive, to fool the system into believing it’s still all one volume, when in reality - it isn’t.

I’m not sure what the real limits of WHS are, but when you have 10 drives, and are nearing about 90% or more capacity being used, that’s when your drives start going nuts, Drive Migrator becomes obsessive-compulsive, and performance really starts to dip.

I can’t imagine a reputable vendor building a WHS server with a hodge-podge of 4GB, 5400rpm drives. I know the HP units come with one or two 500GB drives. So, in a dual drive system, the 1st drive ends up with 480GB of free DATA space, and with the second drive the total system free space is 980GB. Can anybody tell us what happens when a 1TB drive is added as drive #3? What happens if a 1.5TB drive (when available) is added as the 4th drive? What about even larger drives added to the USB ports?

So, as to this claim that the 1st drive should be the largest drive, is there a point when that notion becomes just plain wrong? Has anyone actually tried to find the maximum limits to this system? At what point does this OS just give up the ghost trying to support an ever expanding DATA space?

If WHS is designed to require a drive shuffle and system restore whenever a larger drive is to be added to the system, then I think MS needs to head back to the drawing board. No ‘home’ user is going to bother with that kind of nonsense. Nor should they be required to.

Thanks in advance for your help.

I’ll be frank. The fileserver aspects aren’t so great with WHS, and if that’s ultimately what you’re after - look at something like FreeNAS. What makes it awesome is the backup facility for XP and Vista client boxes (and even Server 2003 boxes as well, but shh.. don’t remind Microsoft).

My line of reasoning is that document files and crap like that are generally aren’t that big, so they can pretty much stay on the client PCs (and get backed up safely). Plus, Microsoft have always stated in the past that if you keep Outlook PSTs on a network drive, then you’re in risk of corrupting them. Plus, there’s a fix coming for the drive-extender-will-eat-your-files-and-then-your-firstborn-child bug, so it’s not like MS said “Hey, lets make a feature that will fuck up all the users files! That’ll teach them for dissing Windows ME!” and purposely made it this way.

You should not directly open and/or edit files that are stored on the MediaSmart Server while doing any other activity such as large data transfers or media streaming. If you are doing a large data transfer or streaming and need to edit a file on the server, you should first copy the file over to a PC and then open it for editing.

There are a few key applications that Microsoft has identified that can cause this issue when files are opened and edited directly from the server. However to be safe, HP recommends that you not open/edit files directly from the server until this fix is delivered.

Windows Home Server’s Drive Extender technology causes data corruption.
http://www.support.microsoft.com/kb/946676

* Windows Vista Photo Gallery
* Windows Live Photo Gallery
* Microsoft Office OneNote 2007
* Microsoft Office OneNote 2003
* Microsoft Office Outlook 2007
* Microsoft Money 2007
* SyncToy 2.0 Beta
* Various Bittorrent applications
* Intuit Quicken
* QuickBooks