Patrick’s Musings

On the weekend I acquired the bits I needed to start my new project. A Windows Home Server (WHS) for my network at home. I can hear the cries of ‘use Linux/BSD/Solaris etc’ from here. I have decided to try Windows for several reasons, which in no particular order are:

• All my desktops & laptops now run Windows 7
• I hack away at UNIX & Storage all day at work, at home I just want it to work
• It supports all my hardware
• I wanted plug and play support for my Windows 7 Media Centre PC

I installed WHS on a Gigabyte motherboard with an Athlon X2, 4gb of ram (32bit OS) and currently a 500gb sata drive. I spent more on my heatsink (Oh how I love thee Noctua) than my motherboard. I also grabbed and am yet to install an Adaptec PCI-E raid controller, the 51645. Which supports 20 SAS or SATA drives. I intend to play with that tonight. Who needs sleep really.

The install was pretty simple, though a little confusing when after the first reboot it started the standard blue screen, press F6 to install drivers, install. But this is based on Windows SBS 2003 so I shouldn’t have been surprised. Once installed I ran Windows update to get the latest patches & Power Pack 3 which adds Windows 7 support. I then ran the included software to connect my Desktop to the WHS. After a little trouble with my password (don’t connect as guest, then try and authenticate, you stay authenticated as guest and have to reboot), I was now connected. I checked My Computer and didn’t have any new drives, tried looking in Homegroup & Libraries, nothing there, oh what I have to map the network drives myself? I thought WHS was all about removing the concept of drive letters.

Perhaps I’m doing something wrong. I’ll spend some time searching around tonight for options.

What I did like was it automatically backed up my Desktop PC to the server, though with 1.5tb of files I did have to manually exclude my music and movies folders from this backup. I’m given to understand that the restore disk that came with the installation disk can be used to restore my desktop using the backup from the server. Now that’s cool.

More as it happens.