I am new to this world and have a newly built WHS that I would like to upgrade with more storage since my picture database is flooding...
How do I "force" WHS to store and move what is already stored on the 320 Gb disk onto the new 1 Tb disk?
Why do I want to do that? Because I trust my 1 Tb disk much more than the old 320 ( and I just might RAID the 1 Tb one, but don´t tell anyone since it seems a sore toe )
Can I just delete the User Dirs? How do I make sure they are created on the new disk if I create new ones? Is there a way to "lock" the system disk so there is no storage on it?
Hi Johan, RAID is not supported with WHS, but his you already may know. There are some 3rd party add-ins, which claim to do what you want. Deleting anything on D: does nothing good, since it is part of how WHS can present the drive pool as a single storage unit to the end user. So you will find the shared folders always on D:, but instead of real files there are tombstones pointing to the real location of the data. To reach what you want following method should also work: Delete the backup database and start backups from the scratch, after the new disk has been added to the storage pool. This should put new backup files to the new disk (on D: are tombstones still). Enable folder duplication for each shared folder. This will put a copy of the data in them to the new disk. If you need to disable them later (after aduplication cycle is completed), I would assume the data remains on the second drive and gets deleted from the system disk.
With all these arrangements - never trust your server alone if it comes to critical data. A server can die completely (overvoltage, fire, water, theft ...) so a backup to external disks, which are stored outside, should always be part of the concept.
Assuming the 320 GB drive is not the system disk -- after adding the new 1TB drive to the pool you can remove the 320 GB drive from the system pool via the console. The data which resides there will spool off to the other disks. This may take a while depending on how the other drives are connected and the amount of data.
-Tim
Proposed as answer bykariya21ModeratorFriday, December 25, 2009 1:39 AM
Hi Johan, RAID is not supported with WHS, but his you already may know. There are some 3rd party add-ins, which claim to do what you want. Deleting anything on D: does nothing good, since it is part of how WHS can present the drive pool as a single storage unit to the end user. So you will find the shared folders always on D:, but instead of real files there are tombstones pointing to the real location of the data. To reach what you want following method should also work: Delete the backup database and start backups from the scratch, after the new disk has been added to the storage pool. This should put new backup files to the new disk (on D: are tombstones still). Enable folder duplication for each shared folder. This will put a copy of the data in them to the new disk. If you need to disable them later (after aduplication cycle is completed), I would assume the data remains on the second drive and gets deleted from the system disk.
Not unless it's changed with PP3. WHS always deletes the secondary shadow when Folder Duplication is disabled (and the secondary shadow in this case would be the one on the 1 TB since it was created second).
With all these arrangements - never trust your server alone if it comes to critical data. A server can die completely (overvoltage, fire, water, theft ...) so a backup to external disks, which are stored outside, should always be part of the concept.
