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    hi guys

    am building a WHS server, problem i'm having is how many hard drives i need for my WHS.

    i understand WHS is not really RAID 1 but similiar. when you enabled every folders protection or whatever it called (df?)

    my understanding that RAID 1 needs 2 or 4 or 6 hard drives etc. but with WHS, is it possible to use 3 X 640GB hard drives? will it still working out like this

    3 x 640 = 1920

    then divide by 2 (data mirrored) = 960GB of protected data? is that correct?

    thanks
    Wednesday, June 25, 2008 1:35 PM

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    Hi,

    Not quite,you really need to read through the documentation, particularly the Drive Extender papers.

    However, in essence, your drives are 'seen' as just one large drive with the first 20GB of the first disk being your system partition and the balance of the first disk being utilised as the landing space for any files you may transfer to the server.

    WHS itself takes care of the file locations dependant on your choices. For example, you may not want your TV shows duplicated, but would certainly want your family photos to be duplicated while your backups won't be, as you already have the originals on your Clients.

    As you can see, the space calculation isn't that straightforward!

     

    Colin

     

    Wednesday, June 25, 2008 5:35 PM
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    Yes, you can use any amount of hard drives and sizes. Every folder you set with duplication will put files on two hard drives. Thus you could store that amount of protected data (minus system files, etc)

    However you'd have to wait for WHS to balance its storage. It is not an instant process as it would be writing to a mirrored RAID setup.
    Wednesday, June 25, 2008 6:28 PM