Do you need the original system drive to do a system restore? I recently had a failure of the system drive. After tryin to do a restore I could not complete the process. So i installed a new system hard drive and did a factory reset. I'ts been a week and I'm still moving 18TB worth of data back onto the server using an eSata drive connected to the server. I'm RDPing in and transfering the data.

Did I do all this for no reason?

There is nothing inherently special about the system drive and it can be replaced with any other drive should it fail. Make sure the new drive has been formated before using. The only real issue with replacing the system drive is whether there is any data on the D: partition of the system drive. If you have duplication enabled, then not really an issue as WHS will recreate any original data that might have been on that drive. That leaves you with two options to go forward: 1. Put new system drive in and attempt server recovery so it incorporates all data into the server; or 2. Put new system drive in, disconnect all data drives, and do a factory restore. Once complete, manually migrate all data over to the server. Could be a big task if you have a lot of data. Hope that helps.

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HP MSS EX490 with Intel E6300
4 GB RAM
7 TB Drive Storage

MediaSmartServer.net Wiki, it's loaded with helpful information about WHS and the HP MediaSmart Server.

Thanks for the answer. I don't use the system drive for files since I have 8 bay external USB encloisure and a 4 bay eSata of which I can only use one drive. All have 1.5 tb drives and I have plenty of free space. For some reason I thought the recovery process took info off the system drive to do a recovery.

I'm almost done recoving all my data but had i knokn that i could just throw in a new drive and do a recovery I could have saved myself allot oof hassle and time.

To make matters worse it seems the system drive just got corrupted. Once i put it in an external enclosure and reformatted it - it worked perfect.