WHS 2011 is a bust. XP or Win7 32bit?

[Jesse]

Hi,

I have recently migrated from WHS V1 to WHS 2011. My WHS V1 system worked quite well as a sage server using an HD Homerun, an HD PVR and a Colossus. Not so much with WHS 2011.

After having tuner issues (the colossus was crashing the machine) I uninstalled all the tuners and sage, disabled UAC and started over. I am still having tuner halt errors as well as client freezing.

I want to stay with WHS 2011, so I am going to move my sage server onto a separate machine and use either Win7 or XP. Either way it will be 32 bit.

Is anyone having good luck with Win7/32 and the tuners I am using? I know that the XP based drivers I used with WHS V1 were very stable, so I am leaning towards XP.

Feedback/advice appreciated.

Thanks,
Jesse

[davephan]

I recommend Windows 7 64-bit if you don't need fire wire, it works with all three tuners you listed. I also recommend using Acronis True Image Home 2011. You can also get the "Plus Pack", which will allow you to recover the image to different hardware, which might be necessary if you loose you system board. If you take periodic images of your SageTV computer, then you will be able to recover quickly. That is not possible with WHS.

I moved from XP to Windows 7 64-bit a few months ago. I am using the same hardware as before, and SageTV runs much better with Windows 7 64-bit. I ordered the Windows 7 "Family Pack" for three computers. It included both 64-bit and 32-bit. I decided to try 64-bit instead of 32-bit. If 64-bit did not work out, my plan was to go with Windows 7 32-bit. The only reason I think for using Windows 7 32-bit is if you use fire wire, which has no support for 64-bit. Support for Windows XP will be gone in about a year.

Dave

[stevech]

Another Acronis Tru Image convenience:
Instead of (or in addition to) taking a image of a disk or partition, yielding a big file on some other drive...
One can choose the Clone option, and send the clone to a spare disk drive (since disks are cheap). The clone can be booted just as if it were the original. The clone need not be the same type or size, e.g., I clone my solid state drive boot disk to a cheap SATA magnetic drive. If the SSD ever crumps or gets a garbled file system, or a virus, I just boot the clone. Then reformat the honked up drive and clone the clone back to the reformatted drive.

The clone is pretty fast - like 15 minutes or so.
The bootable clone is peace of mind versus the image file with recovery CD.

The trick is to have the discipline to do imaging or cloning at regular intervals.

[davephan]

I used the Acronis cloning feature to move from a conventional IDE drive to a SATA SSD on my general purpose computer. Windows 7 had to 'recognize' the SSD drive. I think it required running the 'repair' option with the OS DVD. Then the system functioned normally, except for it was much faster with the SSD.

You could use a removable hard drive bracket and get a couple of hard drives for your cloning. Then the drives would be easy to install and remove. Periodically rotate the two backup clone drives. They could even be rotated off site. Although the same could be done with a storage drive just containing the image. Although if your SSD fails, you'd have to replace the SSD first with another drive and apply the image to recover.

If you use imaging, you can do a combination of images. You could do a 'full' image periodically, like every month. Then incremental images once a day. Or differential images if you had the storage space.

I copy my image files and my DVD rips to an unRAID server automatically with Syncback. The free Syncback version is all you need (there are pay versions too, with more features).

You might also want to consider replacing your WHS storage server with an unRAID storage server. UnRAID is far more space efficient. With WHS, half of your storage is consumed for redundancy. With unRAID, only one drive is consumed for redundancy. With unRAID you can loose one drive and nothing is lost. Loose another drive and only one drive is lost. If you used RAID 5, then everything would be lost after the second drive is lost. I don't know what you would loose with WHS if two drives were lost.

Once your unRAID server is setup, it never needs patching or rebooting. It just runs and keeps running. You can automatically backup your data or image files from each computer with Syncback to the unRAID server.

Dave

[bmh]

Not to de-rail this thread but are their any issues with Acronis TI Home 11? I have used Acronis in the past for Windows XP (TI 8 and TI 11). I was considering buying the 2011 version until I read many bad reviews on the new version. For now, I am using the Windows 7 built in imaging tool but it's not as good as Acronis.

[tchapin]

I just moved to Win7 32bit and also bought Acronis True Image Home 2011. Both have been really good purchases.

[davephan]

Originally Posted by bmh

Not to de-rail this thread but are their any issues with Acronis TI Home 11? I have used Acronis in the past for Windows XP (TI 8 and TI 11). I was considering buying the 2011 version until I read many bad reviews on the new version. For now, I am using the Windows 7 built in imaging tool but it's not as good as Acronis.

What are the bad reviews saying? If there are too many bad reviews, there could be problems. I haven't seen any problems. If there are just a few bad reviews, then you might have to discount the bad reviews, since there are bad reviews on the Internet for almost all products, even if they are great products.

I wouldn't trust the backup program in Windows. I've tested recoveries on previous Microsoft backup software, usually the recoveries failed! Maybe the more recent Microsoft backup software has more recoveries. The reason that third party imaging software exists is because that Microsoft's backup software has been unreliable when it comes time to do a recovery.


Dave

[MattHelm]

Originally Posted by davephan

... I moved from XP to Windows 7 64-bit a few months ago. ...

Not to derail either, but do you still have UAC in the normal mode, or off??? If I switch to 7 for my servers, one reason would be for the UAC protection. (something is better than nothing)

[stevech]

I've had all the Acronis versions since pre-2009.
The 2011 version has a different UI that's confusing to those accustomed to the older, but the UI is good for the new customer.

I prefer the 2009 version.
A problem is that the new SSDs and some new hard disks are going to the large sector sizes (no longer 512 bytes). This leads to the track boundary alignment issue for partitions. I believe that TI 2011 is the first to implement that for creating partitions. The partition alignment, IIRC, is an issue in Win 7, not Vista and earlier. And some Linuxes.

Acronis has saved my beehind several times, and the clone has simplified disk migration.

I wonder if the backup in Win 7 is reliable. It's an incremental. I set it up on a family member's new PC. To run once a day. I noted that if I do a power down while it's doing the first big save, it just ceases the incomplete backup. I guess it would do it again at the next scheduled time. But you'd think it would pop-up "do you want to ..."

For my really important files, I rely on SecondCopy.

[davephan]

Originally Posted by MattHelm

Not to derail either, but do you still have UAC in the normal mode, or off??? If I switch to 7 for my servers, one reason would be for the UAC protection. (something is better than nothing)

I did not make any changes with UAC, it is at the Windows 7 64-bit default, "Notify me only when programs try to make changes to my computer". I haven't had any problems with SageTV with UAC set to the default.

Dave

[Jesse]

Hi,

Thanks for all the replies.

I was really hoping to hear from anyone that is successfully utilizing tuners identical to mine in Windows 7 32bit. I know they are supported, but the forums are full of people who are having real problems with supported hardware.

I ran XP pro on my sage server for a few years before WHS V1, and it was very reliable. I was considering going back to it mostly because the drivers are so well sorted. It is obsolete, but MS states they will support it until 2014.

I will be trying Windows 7 32 bit. I am running 64 bit on all my other machines, but I am not going to continue to fool with driver/hardware issues. 32 bit will see just over 3 gigs of ram and that will have to be enough.

As for Acronis, I have used it numerous times in the past and still have a copy I use when I am working on someone else's box and want and image before I start "fixing." That being said, I have a backup solution. Windows Home Server 2011. I liked V1 and like 2011 even better. Drive extender was ok but I won't miss it. I am happier with a raid controller and mirrored arrays.

Wish me luck.

Jesse