WHS Operating System Drive Size

[HuMan321]

What is the optimal drive size for WHS? Is bigger better, or wasted?

I want the option to potentially backup large music and photo collections from other networked PC's Will the "D" drive be able to store some of these backups, or just the markers of where they are stored? I am building a new system and will be buying whatever drive gives me the most versatitlity for the OS drive.

All comments welcome.

[gplasky]

Between 500GB to 1TB would be optimal. I wouldn't go smaller then 300GB. D: is no longer a landing zone for files. The backup database is stored on the D: drive. It will only store 1 copy of a file no matter how many PC that same file is on so the db won't get as large as you think.

Gerry

[HuMan321]

Originally Posted by gplasky

Between 500GB to 1TB would be optimal. I wouldn't go smaller then 300GB. D: is no longer a landing zone for files. The backup database is stored on the D: drive. It will only store 1 copy of a file no matter how many PC that same file is on so the db won't get as large as you think.

Gerry

We have about 800GB of music and 300GB of photos that I want to backup besides the other things that might make sense. Would this stuff be stored on D drive? If so, should I go with a 1.5TB or 2.0TB?

Also, once this music and photos were backed up does WHS do incremental backups for the small changes that would happen with the music/photos as we add them to the original computer they reside on?
Thanks

[gplasky]

Why wouldn't you store the 800GB of music and the 300GB of photos on the WHS shares? One of the points of WHS is that is your Home Media Server. That is where you would want to store those files. And protect those shares with duplication.

If you're keeping them on the original PCs here is how that would work.

The home server side of the solution is a database that is specifically designed to efficiently backup multiple home computers on a daily basis. The cluster data and metadata from each home computer is stored on the home server hard drives.

The backup database is stored entirely in the folder D:\folders\{00008086-058D-4C89-AB57-A7F909A47AB4}\. The content of this folder is migrated by Windows Home Server Drive Extender from the primary data partition to a secondary data partition if the home server has more than one hard drive.

The Windows Home Server backup engine stores data at the cluster level. Clusters are typically 4 kilobytes (KB) in size. The backup database records include clusters and hashes of these clusters (a hash is a number that uniquely identifies a cluster based on its contents). The database also contains information on the structure of a hard disk volume (NTFS information).

During the backup process, a cluster from one home computer that is identical to a cluster from a different home computer is sent to the server exactly once and stored exactly once. Because Windows Home Server backs up multiple computers (space) every day (time) to a single database, it in essence supports “single instancing of home computer backups across space and time.”

When the cluster size is different among volumes, no data is shared between the volumes in the backup database. By default, every newly created NTFS volume gets a cluster size of 4 KB. A few volumes that started out as FAT and were converted to NTFS have a cluster size of 512 KB. The only way to get any other cluster size is to format the volume yourself and explicitly request a different size.

Note
You can maximize the efficiency of the home server backup database by ensuring that all of the hard drives on your home computers are formatted with NTFS and with a cluster size of 4 KB.


The backup database is a collection of files that can be broken into three categories:

• Global files - Files that track the history of all home computer backups and all of the other files in the backup database.

• Cluster files - Files that store the actual cluster data from the home computers. These are usually in 4096 byte increments. These files grow to 4 GB in size before a new file is created. These files are stored as Data.XXXX.Z.dat, where XXXX=cluster size in bytes, and Z=0,1,2,…

• Home Computer specific files - A boot record and data for each hard drive volume that gets backed up from each home computer.

Gerry

[davephan]

Originally Posted by gplasky

Between 500GB to 1TB would be optimal. I wouldn't go smaller then 300GB. D: is no longer a landing zone for files. The backup database is stored on the D: drive. It will only store 1 copy of a file no matter how many PC that same file is on so the db won't get as large as you think.

Gerry

Gerry,

I read somewhere that the C drive on WHS defaults to 20 gigs, which seems pretty tiny by today's standards. I do not know how large the D drive should be. What is the reason for a 500 gig to 1 TB drive for the C / D drive?

Could the WHS C / D drives be setup on RAID 0 for higher performance?

Dave

[gplasky]

WHS doesn't deal well with RAID and Microsoft doesn't recommend or support it.

Yes-the C drive created by WHS is 20 GB. The balance of the drive becomes D:. You don't have a choice. Even though the D: drive volume is labeled DATA it is really the entire pool that is seen as the DATA volume. The D: drive is where the tombstones reside that can be thought of as symbolic links to the actual files in the pool. The D: drive will also store the backup database. You want enough room to hold the backup database and room to store files if the pool ever gets full.

Here is a good article to read regarding WHS and RAID.
Windows Home Server's Drive Extender vs RAID

Gerry

[HuMan321]

Originally Posted by gplasky

Why wouldn't you store the 800GB of music and the 300GB of photos on the WHS shares? One of the points of WHS is that is your Home Media Server. That is where you would want to store those files. And protect those shares with duplication.

If you're keeping them on the original PCs here is how that would work.


Gerry

The files now reside on my wife's PC. We are looking for a way to back them up and since we are building a new Sage server with WHS we are looking at options, She is always messing with the files (looking up lyrics, renaming, etc) so that is why I thought they would be best left on her PC to not disturb the Sage server all the time.

We are not locked into any idea at all and just wanting to do what makes sense. This is why I thought that D drive might be a good place to store the backup of the music/photos, especially if it does incremental backups. We point Sage at her drives to have the music and photos available. Maybe this doesn't make sense. We are starting new and everything is being questioned. I wish I knew more about WHS

[gplasky]

With WHS there is no D: drive. You use the shares. Using WHS as your central file share is one of the concepts of WHS. When you put those type of files on the share all of your PC can access them easily. You can even very easily access them remotely from the Internet. WHS helps you do that. If you put them on the shares and enable duplication you are protecting them too. Lose a drive and you still have them.

WHS Documentation Enjoy the reading.

Gerry

[HuMan321]

Originally Posted by gplasky

With WHS there is no D: drive. You use the shares. Using WHS as your central file share is one of the concepts of WHS. When you put those type of files on the share all of your PC can access them easily. You can even very easily access them remotely from the Internet. WHS helps you do that. If you put them on the shares and enable duplication you are protecting them too. Lose a drive and you still have them.

WHS Documentation Enjoy the reading.

Gerry

In my case by moving all music/photos to the shared drive (pool?) and enabling duplication wouldn't I be using up 2.2TB of files space just for the music/photos? (1.1 times 2)

All house PC's are XP pro and she has these folders shared on our home network. I know the idea of moving them to WHS/SageServer is a very good option, but is there anything that makes sense with them staying on her PC and using WHS's backup feature? We could still have Sage pointed to them to watch/listen on the TV's?

[gplasky]

Either way works. It more of a philosophy. And yes-in the pool and duplicate dtakes up twice the disk space. But at that point any changes and those changes are duplicated. You're duplicating locally and not copying over the network. I'm not saying these are good or bad-I'm just saying these are the diferences and what happens.

You would just need to share those folders on her PC. Run the SageTV service with a user and a password that also exists on her PC so that the service has permissions to those shared folders. If her PC is off then Sage can't get to those files.

Even though I rip the music on my study PC and I collect and edit all the photos on my study PC I copy them out to WHS. I don't duplicate those folders because I don't care if I lose them off of WHS. I have them on my Study PC. I also exclude them from the backup WHS does because I burn them to CD to store the photos and I have the original CDs of music. Any music I paid for and downloaded is also burned to CD. Sure I would have to rip and copy them back out there if something happened but that's my choice.

It's all about options.

Gerry

[SWKerr]

I stopped using the duplicate folders completely for most things. I now have drives that are not in pool and back them up on a schedule.

The problem with the pool is that if something gets deleted by accident then it is gone from the server. The pool only covers the loss of the drive. I have found I am more likely to loose something from stupidity than a hardware failure.

[gplasky]

Originally Posted by SWKerr

I stopped using the duplicate folders completely for most things. I now have drives that are not in pool and back them up on a schedule.

The problem with the pool is that if something gets deleted by accident then it is gone from the server. The pool only covers the loss of the drive. I have found I am more likely to loose something from stupidity than a hardware failure.

Not if you turned on shadow copy. BY default after PP1 it is off. If you turned it on and a file got deleted you would just retrieve the previous version.

Gerry