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    Hey guys,

    I have been having a number of problems with my home server that may or may not be related to the fact I have an 80GB system drive with 4TB of storage. When I set the system up a year or so ago I was under the impression this was the best way to configure things. However, now that I have done some research as to what my problem may be I think I just want to reinstall the OS on a larger drive (500GB). Is this something that is going to be possible without losing any data from my shared folders? I have over 4TB of information spanned over multiple drives that I cannot stand to lose. My drive configuration is as follows...

    1x 80GB internal PATA (system)
    2x 500GB internal SATA
    1x 1TB insternal SATA
    2x 750GB external USB
    1X 1.5TB external eSATA

    I plan on replacing the 80GB system drive with a 500GB PATA drive. Will this give me the server reinstall option? I do not care if I lose my computer backups or usernames or settings but care deeply about my shared folders.

    Thank you for any help you can provide!

    - Jake
    Saturday, March 28, 2009 6:20 PM

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    Hey guys,

    I have been having a number of problems with my home server that may or may not be related to the fact I have an 80GB system drive with 4TB of storage. When I set the system up a year or so ago I was under the impression this was the best way to configure things. However, now that I have done some research as to what my problem may be I think I just want to reinstall the OS on a larger drive (500GB). Is this something that is going to be possible without losing any data from my shared folders? I have over 4TB of information spanned over multiple drives that I cannot stand to lose. My drive configuration is as follows...

    1x 80GB internal PATA (system)
    2x 500GB internal SATA
    1x 1TB insternal SATA
    2x 750GB external USB
    1X 1.5TB external eSATA

    I plan on replacing the 80GB system drive with a 500GB PATA drive. Will this give me the server reinstall option? I do not care if I lose my computer backups or usernames or settings but care deeply about my shared folders.

    Thank you for any help you can provide!

    - Jake
    As long as you provide the drivers for your SATA drives/controller cards (or set them to IDE mode) and have Folder Duplication enabled on all of your shares, it should work.  Try booting from the DVD, make sure the Load Additional Storage Drivers screen shows all of your drives, then click Next.  You should see Server Reinstallation.  If you don't, stop and check Ken's FAQ post (it's for upgrading from eval to OEM, but the same logic applies).  If you don't have Folder Duplication on all shares, it's possible you might have data on that drive that is not on the server anywhere else.  In that case, connect your 80 GB drive to another computer (not the server), see if there is any data there (inside a hidden folder called X:\DE\shares, where X is the drive letter assigned to that drive after connecting it to your client) that is no longer on the server and copy it back to the server.
    Saturday, March 28, 2009 6:46 PM
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    Hey guys,

    I have been having a number of problems with my home server that may or may not be related to the fact I have an 80GB system drive with 4TB of storage. When I set the system up a year or so ago I was under the impression this was the best way to configure things. However, now that I have done some research as to what my problem may be I think I just want to reinstall the OS on a larger drive (500GB). Is this something that is going to be possible without losing any data from my shared folders? I have over 4TB of information spanned over multiple drives that I cannot stand to lose. My drive configuration is as follows...

    1x 80GB internal PATA (system)
    2x 500GB internal SATA
    1x 1TB insternal SATA
    2x 750GB external USB
    1X 1.5TB external eSATA

    I plan on replacing the 80GB system drive with a 500GB PATA drive. Will this give me the server reinstall option? I do not care if I lose my computer backups or usernames or settings but care deeply about my shared folders.

    Thank you for any help you can provide!

    - Jake
    As long as you provide the drivers for your SATA drives/controller cards (or set them to IDE mode) and have Folder Duplication enabled on all of your shares, it should work.  Try booting from the DVD, make sure the Load Additional Storage Drivers screen shows all of your drives, then click Next.  You should see Server Reinstallation.  If you don't, stop and check Ken's FAQ post (it's for upgrading from eval to OEM, but the same logic applies).  If you don't have Folder Duplication on all shares, it's possible you might have data on that drive that is not on the server anywhere else.  In that case, connect your 80 GB drive to another computer (not the server), see if there is any data there (inside a hidden folder called X:\DE\shares, where X is the drive letter assigned to that drive after connecting it to your client) that is no longer on the server and copy it back to the server.
    Saturday, March 28, 2009 6:46 PM
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    I have folder duplication on all of my shares that are important. Is setup going to be able to see my two USB drives?

    Essentially, if I have the server reinstall option I should be good to go, correct?

    Thanks!

    - Jake
    Saturday, March 28, 2009 6:59 PM
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    I have folder duplication on all of my shares that are important. Is setup going to be able to see my two USB drives?

    It should.

    Essentially, if I have the server reinstall option I should be good to go, correct?

    In theory, yes.  However, I recently tried booting from the OEM DVD and was given the Server Reintallation option even though it never saw my SATA drive (I was just checking something so obviously I didn't continue).  I would definitely check the Load Additional Storage Drivers screen first and make sure all 5 drives are there.  If so, then proceed with the reinstallation.

    Thanks!

    - Jake

    Saturday, March 28, 2009 7:17 PM
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    If I may I'd like to ask a related question.

    My system disk is a 750GB and I have 2x 1.5TB data drives, all are SATA.  I have about 400GB free owing to use of the duplication feature.

    I've been thinking about eventual change of the System disk, with such a configuration would I do it the same way or would I be better off adding at least one more 1.5TB HD and trying to "encourage" the data to be shared or duplicated not on the system disk?

    How would I do that?

    The 750GB HD is about 2 years old and had to have "Repair" run twice in the last 6 months. Nothing too critical but enough to set me thinking.  

    It seems a while since this replace the system disk guide was updated.  http://social.microsoft.com/forums/en-US/whsfaq/thread/cdb387f1-9baa-4ae3-a74b-ff351dc1c0bf
    Sunday, March 29, 2009 9:22 PM
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    If I may I'd like to ask a related question.

    My system disk is a 750GB and I have 2x 1.5TB data drives, all are SATA.  I have about 400GB free owing to use of the duplication feature.

    I've been thinking about eventual change of the System disk, with such a configuration would I do it the same way

    Yes.

    or would I be better off adding at least one more 1.5TB HD and trying to "encourage" the data to be shared or duplicated not on the system disk?

    You can't do that.  It puts the data where it wants to and won't move it unless absolutely necessary.

    How would I do that?

    The 750GB HD is about 2 years old and had to have "Repair" run twice in the last 6 months. Nothing too critical but enough to set me thinking.  

    It seems a while since this replace the system disk guide was updated.  http://social.microsoft.com/forums/en-US/whsfaq/thread/cdb387f1-9baa-4ae3-a74b-ff351dc1c0bf
    Sunday, March 29, 2009 10:36 PM
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    So I had a slight problem. During the course of doing all of this I believe one of my 500GB SATA drives went bad. This I am pretty sure rules out the server reinstall ability. My question is being that I had folder duplication turned on for every shared folder I should be able to reinstall the OS and then add drives one by one and transfer the data over to the new shared folders manually and then format and add the drive to the storage pool without losing data, correct?

    Wednesday, April 1, 2009 1:07 PM
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    Yes, that should work. You can try a server reinstallation even with a missing storage pool drive; at worst you won't get the option and will proceed as you've outlined above.
    I'm not on the WHS team, I just post a lot. :)
    Wednesday, April 1, 2009 4:01 PM
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