Hard drive size for WHS

[PLUCKYHD]

What is the recomended hard drive size for the windows home server operating system I was going to buy a seperate drive to run the o/p system and sage on thanks.

[calypsocowboy]

I think most folks use existing drives. I'd say 250GB-500GB at a minimun. WHS requires an 80G drive. If you are buying new I'd go 1TB. Remember that WHS uses this drive as a landing zone so you can't copy over files that are bigger than it. From what I understand some folks doing like having the Sage recordings in the drive pool so you may want to get two drives and leave the Sage Recording drive out of the drive pool.

Note: I only have WHS and not SageTV.

[PLUCKYHD]

Well I am wanting a seperate o/s drive setup in a raid 1. As I will have 12 seperate 1.5tb drives in the pool itself.

I was hoping 250gb would be sufficient but if I don't add the recodings in the pool (why wouldn't i??) Then I will need 2 more 1tb.

Thoughts?

[gplasky]

I have a 500GB OS drive. WHS will partition it as 20GB for the os and the rest as a D: partition. Minimum single drive size you can use for WHS is 80GB. (I'm not doing RAID) The D: partition will hold the backups and the db of the machines you backup on the network.


Gerry

[Beefcake550]

I would consider leaving the sage drives out of the pool for two reasons:
1) 64KB cluster size (althought there is work around)
2) general usage and read/writing to the sage disk.
3) fragmentation that #2 costs.

Personally, I have a 1TB drive out of the pool for sage and (2) 1.5TB drives and aanother 1TB drive in the pool for BluRay, DVD, and documents backup. I did this so I could at least make sure that when I watch a movie and the kids are watching sage, we would be reading from seperate hard drives and that's a big win to me. Add in some com skipping and recording bandwidth and you could run into problems really fast.

-B

[S_M_E]

Originally Posted by PLUCKYHD

Well I am wanting a seperate o/s drive setup in a raid 1. As I will have 12 seperate 1.5tb drives in the pool itself.

I was hoping 250gb would be sufficient but if I don't add the recodings in the pool (why wouldn't i??) Then I will need 2 more 1tb.

Thoughts?

You can't install the OS on a separate drive, it will partition C and D on the "system" drive.

I suggest 320-500G for system drives and I would avoid RAID in general.

Originally Posted by Beefcake550

I would consider leaving the sage drives out of the pool for two reasons:
1) 64KB cluster size (althought there is work around)
2) general usage and read/writing to the sage disk.
3) fragmentation that #2 costs.

1) You can format the pool with 64K clusters.
2) See above.
3) With 64K clusters in the pool there is less fragmentation and there are WHS specific defrag tools available, if you're worried about it.

Your "out of the pool" concerns are obsolete...

[Beefcake550]

SME -
Thanks for the updated information. I will be checking it out. I'd like to know one more thing if you wouldn't mind....do you run Perfectdisk or something else for WHS defragging without issues?

Thanks,
Brian

[S_M_E]

I don't worry about fragmentation on WHS anymore. I did try the perfectdisk trial when it first came out and I had no problems with it. There's also a diskkeeper WHS version and maybe others as well.

Another benefit to 64K clusters, besides less fragmentation, is that defrag utils have less of a problem with cluster sizes above 16K (WHS default is 4k) so you're likely to have better luck with defrag utilities with 64K clusters too. The <16K issue is actually not a WHS specific issue but it's a VSS issue and WHS uses VSS.

Also, for those that don't want 64K clusters (Sage users do), the newer perfectdisk (and others I assume) versions have better code so that stock 4k clusters aren't a big deal anymore either.

[mikejaner]

Originally Posted by calypsocowboy

Remember that WHS uses this drive as a landing zone so you can't copy over files that are bigger than it.

I thought this changed and is no longer a limitation. I wrong?

[S_M_E]

Originally Posted by mikejaner

I thought this changed and is no longer a limitation. I wrong?

You're right, the D partition is no longer a landing zone. More obsolete info.

[PLUCKYHD]

Thanks for all the help

I will use a 320gb drive for the install drive and set it up with a raid 0 using an external device I found on another post here


one more quick question does the o/p system drive need to be 64k clusters or just the pooled drives? (I have read the workaround to get 64k no problem there)

[S_M_E]

Originally Posted by PLUCKYHD

Thanks for all the help

I will use a 320gb drive for the install drive and set it up with a raid 0 using an external device I found on another post here


one more quick question does the o/p system drive need to be 64k clusters or just the pooled drives? (I have read the workaround to get 64k no problem there)

I think you mean RAID 1. That "external device" is the only RAID that I would even consider for the WHS system drive but even still I'm not ready to recommend it myself. Not without a few more tests that I'd like to see anyway.

I used to suggest that only the additional pooled drives be converted but now I believe that the benefits of converting the D partition (not C) outweighs the downside if used with Sage for a number of reasons.

[PLUCKYHD]

Yes I meant raid 1 sorry hadn't had my cup of dr.pepper yet

I just can't risk not having a backup of the c/d drives and that external device is getting good reviews.

[S_M_E]

Originally Posted by PLUCKYHD

Yes I meant raid 1 sorry hadn't had my cup of dr.pepper yet

I just can't risk not having a backup of the c/d drives and that external device is getting good reviews.

I'm a DP fan too...

If you're only installing WHS+Sage, it's not a big risk really. If you do install other SW, like home automation SW, or whatever, it is more of a PITA to have to do a server reinstall. If you do plan on installing more than just WHS+Sage, take a look at my "resize C" tutorial (linked in step 1 of the 64K tutorial or my sig) too. I used that on my 320G system drive and now I have a 70G C and a 250G D, which has worked out well for me. If you were going with a 500G system drive I'd suggest 100-150 for C and the rest to D.

I'd still like to see a couple of more tests before I'd endorse/use it. YMMV...

[PLUCKYHD]

Question what is the d drive used for? (completely new to whs)

Is this where sage and other apps are stored?

[S_M_E]

It's part of the pool, used last most of the time. It also holds all of the tombstones and a lot of symbolic links but no apps are installed to D nor should you install anything to D.

[PLUCKYHD]

Okay but the "pool" is safe if the operatins system hard drive fails?? since it holds d and c?

[S_M_E]

Originally Posted by PLUCKYHD

Okay but the "pool" is safe if the operatins system hard drive fails?? since it holds d and c?

Any share that is duplicated on a multi-drive WHS is safe. If it's a one-drive system, no. If duplication is off and data is on D, no. You can sometimes (not always) lose some backups if any drive fails but there's an add-in to backup the backups too.

[panteragstk]

Sorry to get off topic, but how are the 1.5tb drives working for everybody? I've read some conflicting reviews about them having very slow access times that make RAID configurations (I don't think WHS was mentioned) think that they have failed. Any truth to this?

[S_M_E]

I've heard the same thing but I don't use RAID on WHS so it doesn't really matter to me. It may be firmware dependant too...