How does WHS allocate drive space?
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It is
120GB is a reasonable size as the primary drive, as long as you aren't planning to migrate large blocks of data at one time, especially if you're going to have such a good number of drives for the distribute data. However, if you are going to be copying DVD images in bulk then you need as much space as possible.
To clarify, the second partition of the primary disk is often referred to as the "landing zone" as that's where all data copied to the server touches down. It also holds your backups, ingeniously compacted, and pointers (known as tombstones) to the data other drives. So, after you take all that into account, the remaining free space is all you have free for incoming data.
WHS is smart, but not in the way you're envisaging. You'll find your backups take a lot less than you expect, especially if you have more than one machine. If you have folder duplication on, then it will distribute the copies amongst the drives as it sees best, to give you maximum protection.
If you replace your system drive, for reasons of failure or upgrading, you'll need to reinstall, with that option. This will require you to reinstall any addons and recreate the user accounts (though all shares associated with them will be automatically reinstated). WHS will then recreate the D: drive by scanning the other drives and recreating the tombstones (obviously with a lot of files this can take some time). It will then take fresh baseline backups of your client machines and you'll be back in action.
All replies
-
It is
120GB is a reasonable size as the primary drive, as long as you aren't planning to migrate large blocks of data at one time, especially if you're going to have such a good number of drives for the distribute data. However, if you are going to be copying DVD images in bulk then you need as much space as possible.
To clarify, the second partition of the primary disk is often referred to as the "landing zone" as that's where all data copied to the server touches down. It also holds your backups, ingeniously compacted, and pointers (known as tombstones) to the data other drives. So, after you take all that into account, the remaining free space is all you have free for incoming data.
WHS is smart, but not in the way you're envisaging. You'll find your backups take a lot less than you expect, especially if you have more than one machine. If you have folder duplication on, then it will distribute the copies amongst the drives as it sees best, to give you maximum protection.
If you replace your system drive, for reasons of failure or upgrading, you'll need to reinstall, with that option. This will require you to reinstall any addons and recreate the user accounts (though all shares associated with them will be automatically reinstated). WHS will then recreate the D: drive by scanning the other drives and recreating the tombstones (obviously with a lot of files this can take some time). It will then take fresh baseline backups of your client machines and you'll be back in action.
