Forgive me if this has been covered, has anyone installed whs2011 on a separate hdd just large enough for the os leaving the 4 bays available for storage? How would you be able to connect the os hdd. If so would you be able to use 4 x 3tb hdd's for 12tb total storage?

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EX490,WHS 2011, E8400, 2.5 terabytes, Vovtech debug box & cable
Norco 4220, Gigabyte GA-EP45-UD3P, Intel Q9550, 4gb ddr2, 5tb, whs2011, mymovies

Nothing?

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EX490,WHS 2011, E8400, 2.5 terabytes, Vovtech debug box & cable
Norco 4220, Gigabyte GA-EP45-UD3P, Intel Q9550, 4gb ddr2, 5tb, whs2011, mymovies

I've often thought of the same setup but haven't figured out how to do it. I've considered splitting the bottom drive slot but you'd then have to figure out how to tell WHS which drive is the boot drive. If you could split another drive slot maybe WHS would automatically see both drives. There is room for an 2.5" drive to sit just under the top cover but it'd require snaking the cables up from a slot below. I think the biggest issue to overcome is that the drive in the slot that is split isn't going to go in all the way so you probably have to leave the front door at least partially open. Anyway, you're not the only one thinking about it.

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HP MSS EX490, Intel Core 2 Quad Q9300, 1TB System drive, 6TB Storage pool managed by StableBit DrivePool

Splitting a slot isn't going to work. SATA = Serial ATA meaning that they can't be daisy chained. A port multiplier would be required. I think the best thing is to get something that will plug into the eSata port (which is present for this very purpose). There are a number of them available. Search the threads on this forum and you'll find several mentioned.

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HP MSS EX490, Intel Core 2 Quad Q9300, 1TB System drive, 6TB Storage pool managed by StableBit DrivePool