Awhile back I had started thinking about running a RAID 1 configuration for my WHS System drive, but never actually got around to doing it. Then one day my WHS system died and I couldn't get my files (easily) back... SO, I thought there definitely has to be a better way to prevent a system drive from failing and I wanted to find it. Then I read a post here http://green-pcs.co.uk/2010/01/21/safe-home-server-part-1/ Titled How Safe is Your Home Server? and thought... WOW, this is exactly what I wanted to do.

So, I was wondering if anyone here has played with a similar unit as their WHS system drive? I found some units here by RAIDON that showed promise: http://www.raidon.com.tw/content.php?sno=0000095

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DIY WHS
AMD Athlon II X2 240
2Gb RAM
13 TB, mixed drives
400+ DVDs and 80 BD ripped using MakeMKV

~My beautiful wife is always asking me if I love my computers more than her...I don't understand it!

There are known issues with software RAID and WHS, if you decide to mirror your system partition I strongly encourage you to use a hardware RAID solution.

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Alex Kuretz
Remote Notification: Monitoring and alerting for your Home Server via email, Twitter, text message, RSS, push notifications, and on your Mac desktop
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I have my current server main drive in RAID1. All I had to do was set it up in the bios before install, and it's transparent to the OS. It's a little extra insurance since I depend so heavily on my server to be up and running. The board that I have uses ICH8 or 9R I think. It's easy to setup, and once it's done the chipset on the motherboard will handle the rest.

I have successfully used RAID-1 (ICH-8) on my System Drive for my test WHS system. No problems, but to be honest I have eliminated it just to free up the disk. After all it is a TEST machine and I had a better use for the storage. Also tried it for a short period during the WHS beta with no problems.

My primary server is an EX475 MSS but were I to build a DIY WHS for production use it would definitely have RAID-1 for the System Drive (and ONLY the System Drive) just as insurance against the PITA of a Server Recovery!

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....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 done this also using the IHC9R on my mobo, just need the text mode raid drivers for the install and everything else is a piece of cake. That was the hardest part, finding the appropriate drivers.

Finding the drivers was the easy part. The hard part was getting them to install. I finally ended up slipstreaming them onto a new intallation that was on a usb key. That should be a thing of the past with Vail once it's relased.

I converted from IDE mode, single system drive to Raid mode Raid 1 in my production machine. I just moved the system drive to secondary controller, enabled intel raid, and booted from the secondary controller into safe mode, installed the Intel matrix drivers. Then moved my drive back and added my second drive for Raid 1, rebooted and told the intel Matrix Storage manager to create a Raid 1 using the second hard drive.

It went very smooth actually.

Basically the same way I did it.

Using HARDWARE RAID, as Alex mentioned above, is important.

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....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