Building a flexible Windows Home Server

Why do you need a home server?

You are getting more PC’s, more laptops, taking more photos/videos and wishing you could have access to all of this on all your PC’s. Stop copying files around and get a Windows Home Server.

Want other information on Media Center? Click here for my MCE home page page.

My solution.

I like building things. I get exactly what I want and I have fun and learn by doing it. Sometimes I get hassle, but hey, that’s how you learn. This project was actually very easy and you can follow these steps too to get a home server solution at low cost. Until I built this unit I had an old, noisy and hot Windows XP box that I used as a server – it stored lots of files and ran MControl to control the house automation (lighting etc) using X10. So far, so fine. Over time though, the storage increased to around 4TB (all USB disks) and since I’m passionate about backups I always seemed to be overflowing from one disk to the next and then having to backup the changes. That said, the solution worked fine allowing me to store my extensive DVD collection and saved video files in one place and have them available around the house on my Media Center PC’s in the lounge and bedroom, an X-box for TV viewing in the kitchen and any laptops on my wireless network.

Then Windows Home Server (WHS) came out. Nice, because Microsoft (MS) had thought about how to make it easy to add drives to increase a storage ‘pool’ using any type of drive that you could connect – even USB drives. The result would be a ‘virtual’ huge disk. No more running out of space between disks. Nice but I’m glad I waited. Exited early-adopters took a hit with the early version when a few of them suffered a data corruption bug, and although I listened with interest to the Home Server Podcast, We Got Served and Ian Dixon on The Media Center show, I held out.

Finally, the Intel Atom D945 mini-itx motherboard came out.

Providing everything you need for a PC except for memory, disk and operating system at around £55 complete with processor this seemed a steal.

Using the C138 case from Travla, 2GB of cheap RAM and a 400GB laptop SATA disk I created a neat mini-PC that was virtually silent:

The result was tidy little unit little larger than a few stacked books. I installed a copy of Windows Home Server on it and we were ready to go.

Now, you have noticed that it doesn’t have the sort of storage that a server needs to have – 400GB will not take long to fill. This is where the killer part of WHS comes in with MS’s Drive Extender technology. This allows you to add USB disks to create a drive pool that looks like a single disk – so no more drive letters.

I had already found these useful drive caddies from NewLink:

This small box takes a SATA disk (2.5” or 3.5”) plugged in from the top and provides power and USB connection to the PC. At around £15 for the basic version and £24 for a version with built-in 4-port USB hub they are very useful in allowing the actual disk to be moved around physically and allowing easy construction of a multi-disk system.

I used a number of these with a range of SATA disk sizes up to 1TB and combined this into a complete Windows Home Server, hidden in a cupboard as shown below. The disks contain a large DVD collection, video and music. Presently only some of the disks are ‘server storage’ (about 2.4TB), the rest are ‘normal’ USB disks which you can plug in and work just like a normal USB disk on a PC. As yet I’ve not relied on the built-in WHS ‘folder duplication’ technology to implement my backups, all backups are away from the server cluster but the drive extender system works well and I’m gradually porting files from the fixed disks over to the server storage.

Want other information on Media Center? Click here for my MCE home page page.