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Building WHS, how should I format my drive? RRS feed

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    I'm repurposing some hardware from my prev workstation to build a WHS box.  Hopefully I can install the new 64-bit Vail version, but I still need to read up on how hard it will be to upgrade from a beta install to production release when that is available.

    To start with, I am using two drives:  an older Seagage Barracude 7200.10 250 GB and a new Samsung HD154UI 1.5 TB.  I intend to use the 250 only for op sys/installation and the 1.5 will start the data pool.  I formatted the 250 by hooking it up to my Win 7 workstation.  It defaulted to File System= NTFS, Allocation unit size = 4096 bytes.

    After reading about the WD advanced format issues, I want to make sure I used the correct format parameters.  Should I reformat and choose 512 byte instead?

    If it matters, the rest of the hardware is:  mobo  = Gigabyte GA-965P-DS3, CPU = e8500, ram = 4 GB, pwr supply 550w Antec.

    Thanks.

    Thursday, May 13, 2010 2:12 PM

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    In all probability, upgrading from Vail beta to Vail RTM will require flattening the box completely. It seems fairly likely that you won't be able to promote your pre-RTM storage pool, either, so you will really be starting from scratch.

    As for V1, Windows Home Server will format your drives when you install.

    I'm not on the WHS team, I just post a lot. :)
    Thursday, May 13, 2010 5:58 PM
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    WHS 2003 will reformat the drive as part of the install.  It creates a 20Gb C drive partition and the rest of your drive will labeled as the D drive.  Later, if you add another drive to the server pool, it will just logically extend the size of the D drive.

    Do not know anything about how Vail will work.

    Thursday, May 13, 2010 10:44 PM