Thinking of building a WHS

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xcubed

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#435409 4-Feb-2011 16:39

SepticSceptic: I might be misreading something here - you mentioned that you were running Vail - the next iteration of WHS, (sans Disk Extender tech), you were getting sound and video dropouts from content served from Vail ? Or did you mean WHS v1 ?

This was with the Vail beta which included Drive Extender. Drive Extender won't be included in the RC or final release of Vail though.

ZALMAN

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#439792 15-Feb-2011 13:30

Will something like this do for WHS? no software included
http://www.trademe.co.nz/Browse/Listing.aspx?id=353826975

At $100 it seems that it would be ok just wanted to check first if it will be easy enough to get up and running
Thanks

gehenna

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#439796 15-Feb-2011 13:35

Sure it'd be fine, but you'd want to make sure it's easily able to accept more hard drives. Those proprietary cases generally only have one or two free slots even in the tower units. I'm sure you could do better for $500 (Which is the buy now) if you built yourself.

ZALMAN

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#439797 15-Feb-2011 13:38

yes Id agree for $500 but dont think ill be able to build for $100 will see what it goes for
I done some reading and there is 3 sata ports free and enough room for 3 more hdd
one in the second 5.25 drive bay the floppy bay and one spare hdd bay
So you think for $100 itl be a good buy and I will be able to get it up and running WHS?

gehenna

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#439802 15-Feb-2011 13:45

For $100 it'd be a steal, doubt it'll go for that though.

SepticSceptic

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#439808 15-Feb-2011 13:50

So you could get 4 drives in there, 5 if you ditch the DVR Rom drive.

Being a server, it should be able to run headless ( no screen, K/B or mouse). And for the specs and price, it's certainly a good proposition

ZALMAN

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#439874 15-Feb-2011 16:07

Well I got it for $103 so not far away from $100
Now I guess the fun begins of getting it to run

Lenovo

Shop now for Lenovo laptops and other devices (affiliate link).

SepticSceptic

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#439880 15-Feb-2011 16:21

Hmm, more like $104 :-). Dang good price.

Getting WHS to run is easy, it's all the stuff that you wanna do is the tricky bit :-)

Give us an idea of what you actually want to do, or plan to do ?

Record / Capture TV / video ?

Music / Media server ?

Data Backups ?

Capturing all your photos, documents and other assorted digital information ?

ZALMAN

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#439894 15-Feb-2011 16:42

Record / Capture TV / video ? Can this be done?

Music / Media server ?
Yes I have a Win7MC in lounge currently
Samsung 6200 tv in bedroom that I would like to be able to stream music, videos and captured tv if possible
and a couple of laptops in the house

Data Backups ? yes I would like to have laptops and media centre backed up

Capturing all your photos, documents and other assorted digital information ? yes Im planning on putting this under the house our house got cleaned out last year and while I had backed up photos etc on a external hdd it was not off site and guess what they took that too

but in saying this I now have photos backed up off site

So basicly to start with I would like to have automatic backups of all computers in the house and a media streaming option

SepticSceptic

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#440128 16-Feb-2011 10:06

ZALMAN: Record / Capture TV / video ? Can this be done?

Sure can - adding in a Sat / UHF Digital tuner card will allow the WHS to record FreeView TV. Ditto for Sky, but that is a grey area. I don't record TV direct to WHS myself at the moment, I have other, more convoluted ways. :-)

Music / Media server ?
Yes I have a Win7MC in lounge currently
Samsung 6200 tv in bedroom that I would like to be able to stream music, videos and captured tv if possible and a couple of laptops in the house

Works great, so far. Just started setting up MyMedia frontend for the video library. Pretty good - goes and identifies your vido library, gets covers, ratings, etc. Allows media centre and other media extenders to have a nicer front end to allow you to choose what you want to watch. Bit of a mission in that the folder and file structure needs to be a certain format, otherwise the data is a bit jumbled.

Haven't quite figured what I'm doing for the music front end. I use MediaMonkey as my music library / player, but all that does is hook into the WHS Music share, nothing special. There is Ultimate Jukebox that I have been recommended as a player with cover displays etc. But that will wait until I fix up my touch screen LCD.

Data Backups ? yes I would like to have laptops and media centre backed up

All doable - will wake up your clients for backup, and doesn't hog too much server HDD space - WHS works on a differential back up system where it only backs up stuff that has changed from the previous backup. Or something like that.

Capturing all your photos, documents and other assorted digital information ? yes Im planning on putting this under the house our house got cleaned out last year and while I had backed up photos etc on a external hdd it was not off site and guess what they took that too

Lowlifes. Hear so many horror stories like that, and crashed HDD's. My WHS is bolted to the floor, and guarded by highly trained attack chickens. :-)

There are a couple of plug-ins I recommend:
1) SMART monitor - monitors the health of your HDD's. I had a failing HDD that was picked up by SMART, a slowly increasing bad sector count - the OS didn't really see it.

2) Lights Out; Starts WHS and clients at specified times

3) Clam AV for WHS - the only free option for antivirus. Jury still out if this is necessary.

4) MyMedia - as explained above.

ZALMAN

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#442578 22-Feb-2011 21:39

ok ive got it up and running thanks for help

Does any one have utorrent as a add in if so how did you do it?

SepticSceptic

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#442665 23-Feb-2011 10:05

ZALMAN: ok ive got it up and running thanks for help

Does any one have utorrent as a add in if so how did you do it?

Haven't done that, but not recommended.
http://www.homeserverland.com/forum/index.php?/topic/268-is-it-safe-to-run-utorrent-directly-on-my-whs/page__p__1267__hl__torrent__fromsearch__1#entry1267

Suggest you look at www.homeserverland.com, subscribe to the RSS feeds to keep up to date with news and software products.

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