As per my last entry, I gave up trying to recover the (many years worth of) data on my Linux HDD pair that was destroyed in the upgrade from Ubuntu 9.04 to 9.10, and have started the install of the new Windows Home Server machine.
I wanted to set the machine up as follows:
Primary Drive: SATA 1Tb (An old SATA 300 Samsung F1 from my desktop machine)
Second Drive: PATA 500Gb (The data drive from the old Ubuntu Box)
Third Drive: PATA 300Gb (The system drive from the old Ubuntu Box)
This was where I fell at the first hurdle however. I know the 1Tb SATA drive is working; however try as I may the BIOS could not detect it (the motherboard is a fairly old nForce 2 model in a Shuttle SN45 V3). After some time trying to work out what was going wrong, I substituted the 1Tb drive for an old 200Gb SATA 150 drive. This was recognised instantly and at a total of 1Tb unformatted storage, I decided to cut my losses and go with it, albeit with an already heavy heart.
So now my machine configuration is:
Primary Drive: PATA 500Gb (The data drive from the old Ubuntu Box)
Second Drive: PATA 300Gb (The system drive from the old Ubuntu Box)
Third Drive: SATA 200Gb (SATA 150)
All good, albeit not optimal, but then I can add more USB drives later, with an additional power cost.
The next step went relatively easily, if slowly, that was to install the Windows Home Server OS onto the machine. I left this running after I'd entered as much information as it required, and went to bed.
The following morning I went through the remainder of the configuration (setting Administrator password, etc.) and after eventually finding the drivers, installed the network card and connected to the network, then stepped through the Windows Update cycle via remote desktop until all updates were downloaded.
After this I hit the second hurdle; although I could connect via remote desktop, the WHS connector application kept telling me the password I was supplying was incorrect, which I knew for sure wasn't the case.
Later that day I Googled the answer which was that the server date and time was incorrect (I was even in the wrong Time Zone despite telling the installation to choose "English (United Kingdom)") and after adjusting these, the connector software did (connect, that is).
So I've now started to install some Add-ins which I'll probably continue doing over the coming weeks.
I also performed the first back-up of my (now only working) laptop, which I left running overnight and was reported as completed this morning.
I've now got to back-up the main desktop machine upstairs, which I'm worried may fill the HDD (so I've done some pruning and will be using that failed 1Tb Samsung F1 drive as a local backup store), and work out the best way of storing my media on the server so that it acts as a mini media hub.
The other task high on my list is to get the machine accessible from the outside world. I'll be referring to my book tonight and will probably be manually configuring the router to do this.
Naturally, I'll let you know how I get on here, but so far it's going fairly well.
Fingers crossed it stays that way.
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must confess I stopped reading your post when I spotted the critical thinking flaw. Same one I had. I'll just build a server from old crap parts to protect my valuable data, I know that newer versions of WHS are coming (2008R2 based in beta now) but an nForce2 with PATA will be just fine
ReplyDeleteHi Man,
ReplyDeleteThanks for the comment, even if you did stop reading ;-)
The drives are fundamentally sound with no errors reported, although I notice they are running a little hot being packed together in a small space, so will probably space them out a little. They were running fine in the old Ubuntu box for a couple of years, so I'm relying on the fact that the greatest chance of failure is when the drives are new (first month or so).
Naturally these are not server class drives.
Whilst hardly cutting edge, the parts seem to be quite solid, that's kind of why I've chosen to use them. The fact that they're too slow for doing anything useful now on the desktop, but still are still working without apparent issues, it made sense not to just chuck them out.
I’m also working with the assumption that any backup is better than none at all (although for photos and music I’ll be keeping a separate back-up anyway).
Plus of course, and secretly probably most importantly, it’s actually quite fun getting this stuff up and running.
I wasn’t aware anything had been announced for the next version of WHS. Hopefully they’ll get it out before my TechNet subscription expires in December, so I can give it a try.
I’d offer you free beer to keep reading, but I’m far too broke/mean. It’s good to have feedback on this as I’m bound to make more than a couple of mistakes.
Hopefully somebody may also find something useful in my experiences too.
I had a similar problem with an old motherboard and a 1.5TB SATA drive. I found a solution somewhere to set the jumper that forces it into 150MB/s mode instead of 300MB/s mode and that worked. On my Western Digital Drive its called OPT1 and you jumper pins 5-6.
ReplyDeleteHi tolonensan,
ReplyDeleteI didn't even realise that was possible, I wish I'd known! Thanks for the info.
I've got to decide what to do now I suppose. I may not need the extra space for a while, however that was the original plan, and if I'm going to switch over drives, the sooner the better before they start filling up!.