Absolutely nothing IMHO. The OS is designed to keep data off the system drive. It makes sense since that drive houses the OS. So if that drive fails then you will lose some of you unduplicated data since you also lost the OS. Also the drive is also used for the system so in theory it will perform worse. In practice it probably doesn't make much of a difference. Using the system drive for data is a "last resort" sort of thing. You are better off putting your bigger drives in the other drive bays.


When I build mine I will make the system drive an 80GB SSD.

Hi All,

First post as I am getting ready to set up a new EX485, my first venture into the WHS.

This also serves as my first question! This comes with the 750GB drive - I also have 3 x WD 1TB SATA drives (new/unused) that I plan to use.

1) Is it best to stick with the 750GB as the "system" drive or upgrade this one to the 1TB to start with?
2) Is there a reason to stay with 750GB in this position or a reason to upgrade this right away?
3) Is the "system" drive primarily used for system files and the others just for data/backups? I am primarily looking to use this as a backup device. If I pulled out the 750GB drive I would use it as an external backup in an enclosure via USB.

Can you offer any insight in this area - upgrade right away to 1TB system drive, not upgrade to 1TB and use 750GB, why/why not? Thank you! As I get going, I look forward to getting advice and offering advice!

Any other setup tips always appreciated! I will also continue browsing the boards.

1) Yes, I think that is best.
2) No reason to upgrade the System Drive right away UNLESS you KNOW you are going to do it sooner, rather that "sometime in the future".
3) The System Drive is generally filled LAST by WHS. Why pay good money for a drive that may not be used, especially if you expect to exceed even that total capacity and add an external enclosure to the pool at some time in the future. If you do pull it it could certainly be used as an external backup in an enclosure via USB.

There are MANY discussions of this topic in other threads...

_________________
....JBick

EX475, 2 GB, LE-1640
PC1: Vista-->W7 Ultimate/32, (D-Drive RAID-5 Array)
PC2: Lenovo Laptop, Win XP Home SP3
2xLinksys WRT54G v1.1 and 2xNetGear GS105 Gbit switch

This post has me thinking. If you guys really think that using the system drive for data is a bad idea, then what's the point of having a 500GB or 750GB drive sitting there given that the whole "landing zone" seems to be a thing of the past and the system partition uses only 20GB. That sounds like more than 400GB of wasted space in my 470.

Having said that (and assuming the factory reset I am about to do anyway), is there any reason to not pull that 500GB drive out and replace it with a 160GB/250GB/320GB drive at a much lower price? I could then drop that 500GB in an external enclosure and use it for back-ups.

Also, the comment above about an SSD - what do you think about that? If the system only uses a 20GB partitition, why not go with a 32GB or 64GB SSD other than they are still a bit pricey (and I think I remember reading that they may not be terribly reliable yet for constant and long-term use)?

Somewhere else around here someone posted about trying (or maybe just considering trying?) an SSD. You may want to do some searching... In theory it may provide a slight speed improvement but, frankly, I would have to have someone report a rather significant performance gain to even consider spending the premium for an SSD. Most of the time your performance will be limited by the network. After that it will be limited by the other disks. I doubt that access to the C-Drive is sufficiently extensive to warrant an SSD. (When the System Drive was used as a "landing pad" the gain may have been a bit better -- but I still would hesitate.)

I know a couple folks who have moved their main drive (500 GB) to different positions or even to external enclosures. I chose NOT to do this as I liked the idea of a "buffer" should I unexpectedly push the limits of my other drives. (I also don't relish the thought of replacing the drive!) I know of no reason this would not work.

_________________
....JBick

EX475, 2 GB, LE-1640
PC1: Vista-->W7 Ultimate/32, (D-Drive RAID-5 Array)
PC2: Lenovo Laptop, Win XP Home SP3
2xLinksys WRT54G v1.1 and 2xNetGear GS105 Gbit switch

I have more drives and an enclosure on the way, but they'll be a couple weeks in arriving. In the meantime, I'm going on vacation. When I get back, I'm going to do a factory reset on the little black beast called MSS (BBcMMS). Based on what you guys have said and the fact that the area of operations (AO) no longer has a landing zone (LZ), I think I will go out and get myself a much smaller drive to do that reset on. I'll then put the 500GB drive in a sexy enclosure, and use it as an offsite back-up for my most important non-video/non-music files.

Do you ServerExpertDudes (SEDs) see any predictable and noticable gain with a fast drive like one of those speedy 74GB/10k rpm doodads? Will other bottlenecks within my BBcMSS make that extra performance boost a moot point? Maybe I'd be better served (pardon the pun) with a run-o-the-mill small 7,200 rpm drive instead?

The network is the limiting factor so a fast drive won't be of much if any benefit. I would personally keep the 500GB drive as the system drive and buy a 1TB or larger drive for the enclosure so that my backup plan is more future proof and I'm not buying extra hardware I don't need.

_________________
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?

I completely agree with Alex. It's one thing if you already have one of those smaller/faster drives but quite another if you are going to spend good money to purchase one. Spend a very little more and get a 1, 1.5 or 2 TB drive to use for those external backups.

_________________
....JBick

EX475, 2 GB, LE-1640
PC1: Vista-->W7 Ultimate/32, (D-Drive RAID-5 Array)
PC2: Lenovo Laptop, Win XP Home SP3
2xLinksys WRT54G v1.1 and 2xNetGear GS105 Gbit switch

Between what I have on hand and what I've already ordered, I've got five 1.5TB Seagates and two 1TB WD Greens along with a 4-bay USB Sans Digital enclosure. In other words, a $40 smaller drive (checking newegg.com prices) ain't gonna break the bank, but I do want enough to enable full folder duplication, have back-ups at home, and do bare drive offsite backups. I'm tired of losing data (or running the risk of losing data) over a few bucks when lost files are forever?

Which is a reason to KEEP the 500GB drive in place. Six months from now when you exceed the capacity of the other "pool" drives you will have a "buffer" on-line and ready for any overflow. If you REALLY want to replace it, get another 1.5TB drive and put one of the 1TB drives in as the System Drive! If $40 isn't going to break the bank then $110 isn't either.

_________________
....JBick

EX475, 2 GB, LE-1640
PC1: Vista-->W7 Ultimate/32, (D-Drive RAID-5 Array)
PC2: Lenovo Laptop, Win XP Home SP3
2xLinksys WRT54G v1.1 and 2xNetGear GS105 Gbit switch

You've got an excellent point there. That's what I'll do. 1TB into the system slot, and the 500GB will go away or maybe get tucked in to the last slot on the USB enclosure for now until I replace it with a 1.5TB or 2TB (when that 2TB price drops a bit).

I've toyed with the idea of increasing that 20GB partition also to maybe 40GB, but I wonder if I'm better off not jacking around with those settings. At its fullest, mine might have been up to 12GB used (except for the couple weeks when it filled up with something - log files? - but it seems to have corrected itself). In my few months learning, I've decided that less seems to be generally better on the server as far applications go, and many of you seem to echo that.

IMHO there is no need to increase the system partition, if you have an non-WHS application installed and need more storage for program data, you should store that data on D:.

_________________
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?

Hello all,

I wanted to chime in on this post because I have the same questions. So if anyone read my first post, you would know that I have 1.5TB on my main computer and I just purchased an EX485. Now should I leave the system drive as is and pick up a 1.5 to put in slot 2 of the MSS? The 750 will not even cover a full backup of my main machine, never mind my other two. I would like to be as economical as possible while still being reasonable and understand I will have to buy more drives. Also I have a related question - folder duplication would have to be OFF in my scenario, correct? I'm still a bit confused as to the way the MSS works for disaster recovery (DR) situations. One way of using the MSS is as a full system backup (with a folder structure) and another is to do a image ala Ghost? Is that right? HP's website isn't very clear and I figured I'd ask while I was on the subject. Thanks!

-Mike

Yes, I would leave the 750GB System Drive in place and ADD the 1.5TB as a second drive (in the pool). Also I would add a third drive sooner rather than later!


With two drives you CAN use duplication.


Client backups is one function with TWO ways to recover: (1) by individual (sub-) folder or file and (2) by restoration of a disk image. In either case you can go back to a previous version, by day, week, month, depending on how far back you save the backups. Shared Folders are a separate functionality.

You might check out the MS Technical Briefs available through the MS WHS Technical Library.

_________________
....JBick

EX475, 2 GB, LE-1640
PC1: Vista-->W7 Ultimate/32, (D-Drive RAID-5 Array)
PC2: Lenovo Laptop, Win XP Home SP3
2xLinksys WRT54G v1.1 and 2xNetGear GS105 Gbit switch

Sweet. Thanks, John. I put 2 1.5TB drives in. Have been running fine for about 2 weeks now. I still haven't put folder duplication on because I'm not sure if the 3TB will be enough I may have to throw another 1.5TB drive in there