Tutorial: SageTV on WHS with 64K clusters in the drive pool...

[heatvent]

Originally Posted by gplasky

It's a one time operation. He doesn't have to do it again. And at the time it's done there is next to no data on the drive.

Gerry

Sorry, my confusion, I was thinking the D partition had all his data on it. I understand that it does not.

I think I did my original setup the opposite of what is needed here. I have 2 1TB drives and a 400GB. My OS is on one of the 1TB drives so my D partion as I understand it is 900+GB. I use the 400GB drive as my recorded TV drive (unmanaged) and it is formatted at 64K. So I think to switch, I would need to move the OS to the 400GB drive so as to not waste space on the D partion, correct?

If I have that right, the question is whether it is worth it to do this to get my recorded tv drive in the pool and whether I would need more than 400GB of space for recorded TV (which is a lot of TV). Also, one of the reasons I chose the setup I have is that I didn't want my data drives to be subjected to a lot of read/write over time in fear that it would increase the risk of drive failure, any thoughts on that?

Finally, I was wondering if the Acronis Disk Director Server edition trial could converty the D partition or do you need to purchase it.

[gplasky]

To do what you want to do will be a little more complicated. If you use your 400GB as the OS you can't do a WHS reinstall and so you won't be able to keep the drive pool. You'll not only need another 400GB to put those current recordings on, you'll need to move whatever you have off the pool drives. Let's say you move the 400GB of recordings off the drive. You will be doing a new WHS installation to the 400GB drive. After the install if you add either 1 TB drive to the pool WHS will format it. You would need one new extra 1 TB drive to be added to the pool first and then copy the data off the existing 1 TB drive to the new drive in the pool. Then you can add the old drive to the pool and format it for 64K and move on to the next 1 TB drive. It can be done at the cost of investing in one more 1 TB drive.

Don't know about the Acronis question but I would imagine the trial might be limited to the size of the partition you can convert.

Gerry

[g-man]

Everyone, this thread has been very helpful and I am planning on moving to WHS but first want to go through a test period to not disrupt the WAF. I only have a 500 GB drive at the moment for testing and was wondering if it is suitable to use this as the primary, at the default 4k, and run Sage off that until I get things where I want it and add another 1TB drive later (64k)

My end goal will be to add the 1TB later but I haven't seen anybody discuss using just 1 drive in the beginning. MS says it needs two drives but since this is just for testing I am not concerned with redundancy etc.. Thanks for everyone's help.

[heatvent]

Originally Posted by g-man

Everyone, this thread has been very helpful and I am planning on moving to WHS but first want to go through a test period to not disrupt the WAF. I only have a 500 GB drive at the moment for testing and was wondering if it is suitable to use this as the primary, at the default 4k, and run Sage off that until I get things where I want it and add another 1TB drive later (64k)

My end goal will be to add the 1TB later but I haven't seen anybody discuss using just 1 drive in the beginning. MS says it needs two drives but since this is just for testing I am not concerned with redundancy etc.. Thanks for everyone's help.

I don't think you NEED 2 drives. If you want folder duplication, two drives are necessary since a copy of the shared folders are duplicated on each drive. But WHS can be installed on 1 drive for sure, that is how I initially installed it and later added a second 1TB drive to the pool.

I tried this tutorial and ran into a problem along the way so I need to do a reinstall. I think I will go back to my old setup which was 2 1TB drives managed by WHS and a 400GB drive unmanaged formated with 64k clusters just for recorded TV. IMO, it is not worth doing all of this which I feel will catch up to me sometime in the future when I have to reinstall, upgrade, have the system drive fail or something like that. I am going back to the KISS approach. Also, I keep getting the eebie jeebies about recording TV to the same drive all of my important data is on that I have spent time and money backing up several ways. It is usually recommended in a normal setup to use a separate partition for your normal data and another for TV recordings to improve performance and avoid risk of losing data. This really can't be done with WHS without using a separate drive altogether since WHS takes over the full drive in the pool (at least I think it gets rid of all partions/data). I realize that the extra space on the TV drive is limited and not shared with the pool, but I could always buy a bigger drive and copy over or do an extended partion or something like that if I run out of room.

If you are not on WHS, I highly recommend it. The setup is simple, if you don't try to do too much on the server (i.e. simply install WHS on a headless/keyboardless PC, process all windows updates, only access via RDP, only install drivers for things you need that are not working (LAN, tv card, etc.)), only do SageTV setup from an extender/client. Follow these rules and I would bet you could be up and running in an hour or so + data copy time. WHS is really a nice product and well worth the switch over, but it is not intended to be used as a stand alone PC so avoid doing so and add as little as possible when it comes to programs and drivers and you will be fine. This concept took me a while to adjust to so I spent some time wrestling with issues.

In summary, try it out to make sure you don't have any serious compatibility issues with your hardware setup. If you get it working well, I would copy your data over to the 500gb drive and install WHS on the 1TB drive, copy any "data" back to the shares on the WHS drive, and leave the 500GB unmanaged for Sage TV recordings (just my opinion). Alternatively if you want the drive space to be managed and have the ability to add space easily you can do the tutorial and it would be better to install WHS on the 500GB drive like in the tutorial and then add the 1TB drive to the pool.

[g-man]

Thanks, I got it up and running over the weekend and so far am happy with the results. It took me a little longer than the 1 hour suggested but I will be prepared on the final install with the 1TB drive.

I installed everything with the default 4k and everything is good except for a placeshifter that I have running on an old AMD 1.2 GHZ with default MB graphics seems to have slowed down a bit just on the defualt STV menus. I didn't have this problem when the server was running the same hardware on Vista 64 bit OS. I just push SD through this box and that works fine, it is just the menus so I think I have another issue going on that I will need to figure out.

[heatvent]

Originally Posted by g-man

Thanks, I got it up and running over the weekend and so far am happy with the results. It took me a little longer than the 1 hour suggested but I will be prepared on the final install with the 1TB drive.

I installed everything with the default 4k and everything is good except for a placeshifter that I have running on an old AMD 1.2 GHZ with default MB graphics seems to have slowed down a bit just on the defualt STV menus. I didn't have this problem when the server was running the same hardware on Vista 64 bit OS. I just push SD through this box and that works fine, it is just the menus so I think I have another issue going on that I will need to figure out.

I think with placeshifter, the STV workload is done on the server. So it's not surprising. WHS doesn't really like decoding and doesn't like supporting hardware decoding. Did you try making sure the most recent directx is installed and the latest java release? Also, have you tried to install video drivers on the server? Usually XP drivers will install or you can manually install using the device manager and searching for the .inf of the xp drivers. You might be able to get a little better video support but I wouldn't expect full hardware acceleration of the latest technologies like on Vista. However, YMMV on whether you have issues.

[g-man]

It was the drivers for the video card on the WHS server. I was just using the generic MS one as I didn't care about grahics for the machine but it seems that I should. The latest Nvidia set got me back to normal.

Thanks for the help!

[dwk]

I was considering installing the WHS 120-day trial to try this out for my SageTV setup instead of XP. Does anyone know if I'll be able to convert the 120-day trial into the full version if I decide on upgrading? I'd hate to install WHS trial initially, find I like it, then have to reinstall and reconfigure everything once I purchase the retail version.

[gplasky]

You can do a reinstall.-there is no "upgrade". You can keep the drive pool and the media but you'll reinstall your drivers for your tuners SageTV and plugins. Unless....you keep a backup of the SageTV directory and copy that over the new install including your wiz.bin file. Check the FAQs on what you need. You'll still have to install hardware drivers including tuners, sound, video, etc.

Gerry

[heatvent]

Originally Posted by dwk

I was considering installing the WHS 120-day trial to try this out for my SageTV setup instead of XP. Does anyone know if I'll be able to convert the 120-day trial into the full version if I decide on upgrading? I'd hate to install WHS trial initially, find I like it, then have to reinstall and reconfigure everything once I purchase the retail version.

I reinstalled recently and put in no product key so it automatically goes into trial mode for 30 days if that helps. Then enter the key when you have it before the 30 days.

[dwk]

Originally Posted by heatvent

I reinstalled recently and put in no product key so it automatically goes into trial mode for 30 days if that helps. Then enter the key when you have it before the 30 days.

Thanks for the suggestion, that'll work great!

[davephan]

I own and have been running SageTV on XP for years. If I switch to Windows Home Server, do I need to re-purchase SageTV, or can I use the same license I already own for XP on WHS?

Dave

[gplasky]

Same license. Just download the Sage for WHS .msi and put that in the Add-in directory on your WHS server and install it thru the WHS console. DON'T install outside the console or like a typical app.

Gerry

[calypsocowboy]

I thought I would post my experience with converting the D:\ to 64K clusters.

I tried the trial of Acronis, it won't do the actual convert I ended up doing the destructive format and this is what I did. The F drive is a second drive.

1. Open command prompt, this first one was on D:
2. Xcopy d:\ f:\AllCopy\ /c/h/e/r/k/y/s >> temp.txt
I got an error about "Unable to create directory - F:\allcopy\System Volume Information" but I ignored it.
3. Formatted D to 64K from Disk Management
4. Open command prompt, this time I did it from F:
5. xcopy f:\allcopy d:\ /c/h/e/r/k/y/s >> temp1.txt
6. Rebooted server and checked partition size.

Everything seemed to work fine so far, that was last night, I haven't checked thing yet. I haven't added F back into the pool yet as there is some data on it I need to move back over to the server.

-Josh

[kevine]

Originally Posted by calypsocowboy

I thought I would post my experience with converting the D:\ to 64K clusters.

I tried the trial of Acronis, it won't do the actual convert I ended up doing the destructive format and this is what I did. The F drive is a second drive.

1. Open command prompt, this first one was on D:
2. Xcopy d:\ f:\AllCopy\ /c/h/e/r/k/y/s >> temp.txt
I got an error about "Unable to create directory - F:\allcopy\System Volume Information" but I ignored it.
3. Formatted D to 64K from Disk Management
4. Open command prompt, this time I did it from F:
5. xcopy f:\allcopy d:\ /c/h/e/r/k/y/s >> temp1.txt
6. Rebooted server and checked partition size.

Everything seemed to work fine so far, that was last night, I haven't checked thing yet. I haven't added F back into the pool yet as there is some data on it I need to move back over to the server.

-Josh

Originally posted here but it worked for me as well.

[briands]

Dumb question ... could be the 2 hrs of sleep last night since I decided to switch my server over to WHS... what was I thinking???

How do you define the "User" that Sage runs on in WHS? In the XP version, there was a tool that allowed it to be configured.

[gplasky]

Right click on My Computer and go to Manage. Go to Services and find the SageTV service. Right click for Properties and choose the Log On tab. Put the user and password in "This Account". User must be an Administrator with a password. The SageTV Service Control exe is still in the SageTV directory. You can still use that. Also make sure you installed java on WHS. It's not done automatically on WHS when you install the SageTV Add-on thru the console.

Gerry

[Skirge01]

This is easy to forget, so I'll mention it. Also, ensure that the account you use for the service also has full access to any WHS shares you want Sage to use: music, photos, videos, etc.

[HuMan321]

Originally Posted by gplasky

Right click on My Computer and go to Manage. Go to Services and find the SageTV service. Right click for Properties and choose the Log On tab. Put the user and password in "This Account". User must be an Administrator with a password. The SageTV Service Control exe is still in the SageTV directory. You can still use that. Also make sure you installed java on WHS. It's not done automatically on WHS when you install the SageTV Add-on thru the console.

Gerry

Can you please walk me through this a bit? Do I take one of the WHS console accounts and set it up for Sage Service log-in?

One of the accounts in Console is called "Dad" It has full read/write rights in Console. I am not sure if it is an administrator though. I chose it and put in a password. Sage service login now refers to it as .\Dad

I am wondering if this will help me import files from a remote XP machine I am having trouble with?

[gplasky]

It will if you have that same account with the same password on the XP machine. As my other post got to My Computer and Manage. Find the Users and Groups and go into the Users folder. Find the user Dad on the right hand side and right-click and choose Properties. Look for the "Members of" tab and you should see Administrators in the list. If not you need to add it to the group. Click the Add button and type in Administrators. CLick the Check Name button and it should give you Machinename\Administrators. Click OK and now the user is part of the Administrators group. Make sure the XP machine is sharing the directory you want to import and the user Dad with the same password and in the same group is on the XP machine.

Gerry