Hello Everyone,
My name is Gaurav Garg, I live in the Seattle, WA area; my screen name is GGHTPC.

I have been an HTPC buff for quite some time. Four years ago I built DIY HTPC based on Windows XP MCE with iTunes to consolidate and stream music, vedios and photos across my house. About a month ago the 1TB HDD in my HTPC crashed during the Windows XP to Windows 7 upgrade. Fortunately, I have most of the data on a backup so no big deal. I started looking for a replacement for my HTPC and really like the HP EX495 media server option.

My only issue is that HP was out of stock. I found another box with Windows Home Server hidden under Small Business NAS. But I still did not like the specs on the hardware for the money I had to spend. Finally, I decided to buy a HP Proliant ML 110 G6 with Xeon processor and 2 GB RAM. I got a copy of Windows Home Server from Microsoft employee store through a friend

As of now I have not yet started the installion. Hopefully, I can use the holidays to tinker around with the box. I will apprecite any tipcs; thank you in advance. Thank you for putting so much effort into the forums.

_________________
MSS: HP EX495 (removed FireFly, Twonky; using full iTunes)
Client1: AppleTV
Client2: Win7 Home Premium (Intel Core2 Duo, 4GB RAM, Azuntech X Meridian, Fusion 5RT Gold, 1TB)
Client3: Win7 Prof 32bit
Client4: MacBook Pro
Client5: Mac Mini

Hi GGHTPC! Welcome to the forums!!!!

You will very much enjoy using WHS for streaming your media! There are a multitude of options you have to chose from. The best place to start would be the GUIDES, REVIEWS and then the NEWS areas. Look for the guides written by Damian, I can't think of any better place to start for streaming your media.

I stream my media both at home and online. I very much enjoy accessing my music while at work and I use SubSonic for that. For streaming movies online I use ORB. Within the home you will be able to easily access your media content to all the computers connected on your network. For streaming content to your TV all you will need is a media extender or a small HTPC which you had before. This is Damians area and he has tested and reviewed and owns more toys for thing then anyone and if I am wrong on this I will be the first to appologise.

Your about to enter a world of possibilities and I can tell you when you get started you will wish you had done this sooner. Also you picked an awesome site which is packed full of useful information and populated with great forum members who are always willing to share their expierences and help others though issues.

_________________
Exploring the possibilities!

Migrated from WHS2011 to WS2012E: HIGHLANDER

~ Norco 4220 Enclosure
~ Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD5
~ AMD Phenom II X4 995 3.2 GHz
~ 8 GB Corsair Vengeance DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800)
~ 3 Supermicro AOC-SASLP-MV8

Thank you for the welcome note. I really appreciate the effort everyone has put in to create the knowledgebase. I have been trolling the guides and reviews so far I am missing one piece of the puzzle. How do I setup a backup of the WHS server? I read something about the BDBB(?) add-in but that seems to suggest it will backup the backup of clients?

I am paranoid because I just crashed 1TB HDD on my server recently (murphy's law, crash happened during an OS upgrade). Luckily I have most of the backup on a NAS. Ideally I would like to back up the entire setup OS and all on a DAS/NAS.

_________________
MSS: HP EX495 (removed FireFly, Twonky; using full iTunes)
Client1: AppleTV
Client2: Win7 Home Premium (Intel Core2 Duo, 4GB RAM, Azuntech X Meridian, Fusion 5RT Gold, 1TB)
Client3: Win7 Prof 32bit
Client4: MacBook Pro
Client5: Mac Mini

Are you talking about backing up your WHS O/S drive or backing up your shared WHS drives? If your shared WHS drives just enable duplication. As far as your O/S drive, I don't believe there is any benefit to doing that or restoring the backup would even work correctly. I believe several members have created a WHS where the O/S is set up RAID1. If your O/S drive crashes simply replace the drive and do a server recovery. You will need to set up your users again as well as any apps/programs you may have installed directly to your WHS, but usually it is minimal.

_________________
Cheers,
Damian

DIY WHS - 12.5TB and growing, too many gadgets to list

Did you read the MediaSmartServer blog today?
Blog - http://www.adigitalhomeblog.com
"Like a midget at a urinal, stay on your toes!" - Lieutenant Frank Drebin

Also look at the Shared Folder backup feature if you want to back your shares up to an attached drive.

_________________
Alex Kuretz
Remote Notification: Monitoring and alerting for your Home Server via email, Twitter, text message, RSS, push notifications, and on your Mac desktop
Have you tried our Add-Ins?

Hey GGHTPC,

Looks like dbone1026 and yakuza answered the questions for you. The big difference between a NAS and WHS is WHS has file and folder duplication so if you turn that on your good to go and if a drive should die your data is still there. Should something happen to your server you can pull out the drives and read them in any computer that can read NTFS drives where as in a NAS you can only read the drive when its connected to that NAS. So if the NAS Dies your data is stuck on the drive and I am not quite sure if you get another NAS how that works.

What this all means is that WHS is very user friendly where as a NAS does work but its antisocial when something goes wrong with it where in WHS your now left out in the cold. As you run your server you will see this and very much come to appreciate it. I got some NAS Units that I packed away somewhere that will never be powered again... Guess they need to goto the trash compactor eh.....

_________________
Exploring the possibilities!

Migrated from WHS2011 to WS2012E: HIGHLANDER

~ Norco 4220 Enclosure
~ Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD5
~ AMD Phenom II X4 995 3.2 GHz
~ 8 GB Corsair Vengeance DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800)
~ 3 Supermicro AOC-SASLP-MV8

[quote="Comp1962"]The big difference between a NAS and WHS is WHS has file and folder duplication so if you turn that on your good to go and if a drive should die your data is still there. Should something happen to your server you can pull out the drives and read them in any computer that can read NTFS drives where as in a NAS you can only read the drive when its connected to that NAS. quote]
I am coming to appreciate the subtle differences between my previous life and WHS I used a NAS in the past as a backup and BootITNG (BING) as partitioning and imaging software. I am guessing with WHS, I dont need to do that any more.

Based on the tips from everyone, I added the 2nd 1.5TB as the backup drive to WHS. I hope this will provide me the redundancy I am looking for. Thank you once again for pointing me to the right direction.
Gaurav

_________________
MSS: HP EX495 (removed FireFly, Twonky; using full iTunes)
Client1: AppleTV
Client2: Win7 Home Premium (Intel Core2 Duo, 4GB RAM, Azuntech X Meridian, Fusion 5RT Gold, 1TB)
Client3: Win7 Prof 32bit
Client4: MacBook Pro
Client5: Mac Mini

I will be honest with you I ran a couple NAS units and while they served me well and knock on wood I never had an issue with them. When I bought my first Window Home Server and HP EX470 MSS it did not take me long to migrate my data to the server and found it to be a much simpler platform to use. Over time I found WHS to be very user friendly, easy to use and flexible.

When I think back to my NAS days and compare it to where I am now its like night and day. All I can say is it just works and has opened a whole new world of endless possibilities and evey after 2.5 yrs I am still finding new things to do with them that could not of easily been done with a NAS.

While I do not know those who continue to use there NAS Devices I do encourage people that are concidering a NAS device to take a hard look at a WHS and hope they chose what works best for them but deep down I always hope they go with a WHS because it is a good platform as you will soon discover.

_________________
Exploring the possibilities!

Migrated from WHS2011 to WS2012E: HIGHLANDER

~ Norco 4220 Enclosure
~ Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD5
~ AMD Phenom II X4 995 3.2 GHz
~ 8 GB Corsair Vengeance DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800)
~ 3 Supermicro AOC-SASLP-MV8

I have another dumb question I guess I am used to doing things in round about ways.

I noticed there are media folders in WHS - Music, Videos, Photos. How does WHS copy the files into these folders? Will it look for the extensions on the files or will it copy the Windows Music, Videos and Photos from clients into the respective folders? (I guess later).

All my machines are built with two seperate partitions - one for OS and the other for Data. It allowed me to change the OS (Mac, Windows or Ubuntu) without touching the Data partition in the past. In general, I dont use the Windows Music, Video and Photo folders.

Well, its going to be fun just to figure it out.

Moderators, I know this is the introduction forum and I should move.

_________________
MSS: HP EX495 (removed FireFly, Twonky; using full iTunes)
Client1: AppleTV
Client2: Win7 Home Premium (Intel Core2 Duo, 4GB RAM, Azuntech X Meridian, Fusion 5RT Gold, 1TB)
Client3: Win7 Prof 32bit
Client4: MacBook Pro
Client5: Mac Mini

Those are the default folders setup by WHS. WHS will also create a personal folder for each user to have for their files. How you use them is upto you. What you do need to remember is that you will need to set the folder permissions for every user on your server. Each folder you see and ones you create you will need to determine if the folders should be duplicated or not. This is a key feature in WHS for the protection and preservation of your data.

As for how to use the Media Folders you basically copy the files you wish to place within them. Only you can determine the directory structure you wish to use because in the end its your server. All my movies for example I have separated out by what Video Format was used in the ripping process and then with in those folder I have additional folders for the Classification of the Video, like Documentaries, TV Series and so forth.

I suggest you play with things abit to see how everything works together. Copy a few different types of files and play with them on the different clients to get aquainted with your server and how it works.

There are some programs that you can install on your server to help you with your Media collecting different information to help enhance your media experience and Damian has written extensively about that.

Your world is about to open up and this is just the beginning of a most exciting time for you. If you goto eBay right now and search Windows Home Server you will find books available on Windows Home Server you can order to help you through everything you can possible ask for in addition to the wealth of information on this site and other sites similar to here.

_________________
Exploring the possibilities!

Migrated from WHS2011 to WS2012E: HIGHLANDER

~ Norco 4220 Enclosure
~ Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD5
~ AMD Phenom II X4 995 3.2 GHz
~ 8 GB Corsair Vengeance DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800)
~ 3 Supermicro AOC-SASLP-MV8

I am looking to buy the HP ProLiant ML110 G6. I was wondering what the sound levels were like and the power consumption. Any reports/tips on this?

Snowdins, do a search for "proliant" in the search box at the top of the page and you will find lots of discussions about the server you are interested in. It looks like a pretty nice machine, if my 490 were to die I'd strongly consider installing WHS v1 on a Proliant, simply because you can install eSata cards in the Proliant...

_________________
EX490 w/E6700 & 4MB Mushkin RAM
WHS 2011 w/Stablebit Drivepool
Sans Digital TR5M-BP, 2 x TR5UT-BP
32 TB

Yeah I did some pretty extensive searching on this server prior to posting. There is nothing on the noise level other than some firmware issues that fixed it. However nothing that really gives me an idea of the level. Also nothing on actual power usage with say 4 drives.

Okay. You might want to start a new topic to make sure it's seen, I'm sure there are others on this board who can answer your questions.

_________________
EX490 w/E6700 & 4MB Mushkin RAM
WHS 2011 w/Stablebit Drivepool
Sans Digital TR5M-BP, 2 x TR5UT-BP
32 TB

In general I found the HP Proliant ML110 G6 a very potent machine, especially if we you planning to use it as a server than just a plain old backup machine. I did not find any issues with the noice much, when the machine starts, the fans are pretty noisy during POST but after the OS takes over, the machine is pretty quiet. I was able to use the built in DVD drive to even digitize the movies and I got nice 50 FPS conversion rate as compared to 25 FPS on a Dual core 4GB desktop.
I have no idea on the power consumption as I used it for about 3 weeks. Only thing I can tell you is that HP's lights out module will not work with WHS by default. The smart install media that configures the server can not be used with WHS even though it supports Windows 2003. WHS will not recognize the HDD if you create a RAID volume using smart install media. After trying different combinations, I abandoned the idea of using the smart intall or setting up a hardware RAID volume and simply booted off WHS.
BTW, the server I got came with a 150 GB HDD. You will be better off getting rid of that HDD and start with a large HDD. You will need to add HDDs and enable duplication from WHS.

Ultimately, I returned it and got a HP EX495 because I have bunch of Macs our home network. I could never get the iTimeCapsule (I think) to ever work. I like the HP's add-in for Mac, they are straight forward.
Hope above information helps; send me a message if you need more information.

_________________
MSS: HP EX495 (removed FireFly, Twonky; using full iTunes)
Client1: AppleTV
Client2: Win7 Home Premium (Intel Core2 Duo, 4GB RAM, Azuntech X Meridian, Fusion 5RT Gold, 1TB)
Client3: Win7 Prof 32bit
Client4: MacBook Pro
Client5: Mac Mini