After getting my hands on the retail version of Windows Home Server 2011 (sans license key), two failed installs and a pre-mature catastrophic driver related failure resulting in another re-install: I got my Windows Home Server up and running.
It took a bit of experimenting (which resulted in that catastrophic failure I spoke of), but I was able to get every device recognized in this 6 year old Shuttle ST20G5. I only have a 200 GB drive in there working as the “OS drive”, but it is up and running.
I enabled the web access which allows me to access the home server via the web from anywhere in the world. And I tried streaming multiple SD videos simultaneously without a hitch as well. As soon as I get my Seagate LP 2TB 5900RPM 3.5″ SATA hard drive 64MB, I’ll start backing up computers and implementing Dropbox syncing and all that fun stuff.
I was thinking of implementing a RAID 1 setup, but with the age of this Shuttle hardware I didn’t think it would be a good idea. After a bit of thought, I decided to stick with a single 2TB drive for now and simply use this tiered approach for data “backup”.
- Local hard drive on PC
- Windows Home Server for data that would be a nice to have, but not too important
- HPMediaVault will serve as on-site backup solution for more important data
- DropBox or Amazon Cloud Storage for critical backups
It’s a bit much for home, but at least my data will be safe. Hopefully.
My next objective is to get a hold of a Windows Home Server 2011 license. I have 29 days to do so before this trial period ends. It costs around $110 USD, but I can’t find a North American retailer that will ship to Canada. As days tick away, I may need to call in a favor in order to get a copy of it.
Any chance you could explain how you got the whs 2011 to recognize the sata hard drive?
For the OS drive it’s actually an SATA drive recognized as an IDE drive via an SATA to IDE adapter. Once in WHS 2011 though, SATA ports were recognized after I installed the Windows XP drivers. They worked.