6 replies to this topic

[Mike Rothman]

Good afternoon. I'm planning to repurpose a four year old Dell XPS dual core desktop with 4 mb of memory as my WHS 2011 box replacing my HP 470 WHS workhorse.

I'm intending to install two new hard drives in the XPS, replacing its one current 4 year old drive. If the operating system can handle it, I would prefer to use two 3TB drives, but will settle for 2 2TB drives if that is going to be less problematic.

Any advice about this general strategy or the size of the drives would be most appreciated.

Thanks. By the way, been listening to the WHS podcast since the earliest days and have always enjoyed it and frequently learned a great deal from you.

Best...
Mike Rothman, contributor to BYTE.com

[ImTheTypeOfGuy]

YOu can use 3 TB drives but in WHS 2011 it will split each drive into a 2 TB and a 1 TB. Thus you will see two 2 TB drives and two 1 TB drives. It does this because of limitations with vhd's in the server. At this point I think it is personal choice but given the XPS systems usually only had four or five SATA ports, the 3 TB drives will give you extra storage capacity if needed.

[ikon]

YOu can use 3 TB drives but in WHS 2011 it will split each drive into a 2 TB and a 1 TB. Thus you will see two 2 TB drives and two 1 TB drives. It does this because of limitations with vhd's in the server. At this point I think it is personal choice but given the XPS systems usually only had four or five SATA ports, the 3 TB drives will give you extra storage capacity if needed.

It will do this every time? I thought it was only a backup issue. Could you, for instance, then combine then 2 TB and 1 TB partitions into 1 large volume? What would happen if you had them striped in RAID 0 on a card?

[ImTheTypeOfGuy]

It will do this every time? I thought it was only a backup issue. Could you, for instance, then combine then 2 TB and 1 TB partitions into 1 large volume? What would happen if you had them striped in RAID 0 on a card?

If you have them as part of the pool you cannot combine it. If they are not part of the pool, then I guess it wouldn't separate it at all so you wouldn't have to stripe them back together.

[jmwills]

Are you planning to stay with V1 or move on to 2011?

[Mike Rothman]

Thanks for the replies. Yes, I feel a big boxed in by the limited number of SATA ports, but with 2 x 3TB storage I'll have room to grow considerably, and the XPS box is otherwise well configured for WHS 2011. I'll let you know how it goes.

[jmwills]

You could always add an additional SATA Controller card for expansion but at some point you cross the line of repurposing old and building new from scratch,