Here's a question I left for Alex, any comments:

"Hi Alex, I just made a purchase of a NAS server as well. In my case I chose the Sans Digital 5-Bay eSATA RAID 0/1/10/5/JBOD Tower Storage Enclosure w/ 6G PCIe Card TR5M+B, mainly because it’s on sale right now at Newegg.ca $149.00. Mixed reviews however, some people are reporting a whining sound from cooling fan, so I hope I’m able to change that out if I have the same problem.

In any case, I would like to maximize its storage capacity and Seagate has recently announced a new drive the Barracuda XT high-performance desktop drive Model ST33000651AS, 7200-RPM, which is said to “3TB of capacity easily configurable with Seagate® DiscWizard™ software to overcome legacy capacity limits of 2.1TB with no additional hardware required.”

My question is, do you think the Seagate DiskWizard software could be used successfully on my HP EX495 to overcome the 2.1TB capacity limit of my MediaSmart server?

Let me know what your thoughts. Thank you.

TechBari"

It will be using a device driver to access the space above 2.1; doesn't look like it supports any server product either.

I personally wouldn't want to mix this with DE, won't be supported by Seagate or Microsoft either.

http://www.seagate.com/staticfiles/supp ... _1102_US(2).pdf

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Has anyone experienced success with this? It appears that the Intel link in the above posting is no longer available.

Assuming this plug in works, how do you add such a thing into that box? I was under the assumption WHS would not allow for that. Dealing with a WD 3TB that I would love to either add to the pool or use as a separate drive.

Thanks.

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I have been able to add a 16TB Drobo to the backup set and it is seen as a 16TB volume by the WHS console. The drive is formatted GPT of course and not by the HP EX490. It is formatted by Drobo Tools via RDP. I also added an external 3TB USB WD drive and that was also seen. You can't add the Drobo to the storage pool because it then formats it and everything gets messed up. The underlying server 2003 does recognize GPT drives so that's why backing up works.

Philip

A more standard approach?
Reading your forum over the years there is one underlying question for those of us who don't want to push the envelope too hard on these systems, but still extend capacity...
I'm using an HP 485, and have added 3x2TB. I'm looking into significantly extending the media storage capacity more...
1) Media could be removed, and the system backup area could probably be reduced to fit onto just the original 750G system drive, then copied onto a 2TB drive to max the internal storage of the unit (4x2TB)...?
2) Additional storage can be added to the USB and eSATA ports (without port replication), for a total of 5x2TB external?
3) But has anyone just tried to add a 3TB or 4TB USB drive to the system to get better results?

It seems a simple compromise between capacity and effort - or am I missing something here?

Thank you, K

Hi krisc,

You could add the lager than 2TB drives but they will be partitioned into atleast 2 partitions to make full use of the drives because to the 2TB limitation. There are ways around it but I could not begin to properly comment on this because as of yet I have not started to use the larger drives.

You could always add a USB Port Multiplier to increase your storage capacity. Some prefer to keep their server foot print small and have no desire to expand outside their original enclosure yet depending on the amount of data you move to the server you might just have to at some point or find another solution.

Some of us have moved away from our beloved MSS and have moved over to a DIY Build which can be a cost effective way to accomodate a much larger storage capacity. My Primary WHS v1 server can house 8 drives internally and my Primary WHS2011 server 23 drives. I also own several port multipliers which I keep on hand should the need to expand outside the box.

I also have other servers that I continue to run for various reasons. Having said all this I have to be honest in that I envy those who are able to stick with a smaller 4 drive system but once you begin to fully utilize a server for all sorts of crazy storage reasons the insanity begins and you end up with larger storage systems.

With the new Windows Server2012 Essentials comming out I am debating it this would be a possible solution for me and yes its suppose to support the larger over 2TB Drives so this is of interest to me but I am still uncertain if I want to make this jump or not but thats not going to help you with your situation.

The point I am trying to make here is to encourage you to review your situation and to point out options which you may or may not be aware of. One thing I do know is if your storage needs are growing then I strongly recommend you do consider another solution which best fits your needs. Why spend funds on Port Multipliers when down the road those funds could be used for a DIY Build running an OS of your choosing to better suit your needs. I still believe the MSS is a great solution for some but once you out grow them then you either expand outside the box or bite the bullet and build a rig to suit your current and future needs.

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Migrated from WHS2011 to WS2012E: HIGHLANDER

~ Norco 4220 Enclosure
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~ 8 GB Corsair Vengeance DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800)
~ 3 Supermicro AOC-SASLP-MV8