Reverting back to XP pro from WHS

[davefred99]

I am rebuilding my Sage Server which currently is running on an expiered WHS trial version. I have decided that I just want to revert back to plain old xp pro.
Is it possible to just install xp pro over the top of WHS and have it rebuild the Sage software or will it wipe the c: drive clean and all sage stuff lost. If I remember correctly when I first went to WHS I just copied my original Sage folders and then installed via the .msi sage file.
What is the best/easiest way to go back to XP pro.
Dave.

[Fuzzy]

Backup your sage folder, install XP, and reinstall sage, then copy back over your wiz.bin from teh backup. I wouldn't copy the .properties file, but instead go through setup from scratch again.

Now, moving recordings out of the pool, I'm not sure what that requires. never messed with WHS myself.

[davefred99]

Originally Posted by Fuzzy

Backup your sage folder, install XP, and reinstall sage, then copy back over your wiz.bin from teh backup. I wouldn't copy the .properties file, but instead go through setup from scratch again.

Now, moving recordings out of the pool, I'm not sure what that requires. never messed with WHS myself.

I am not sure If I can even access the Sage folder anymore because its on the C: drive and my WHS trial is expired and I can not remote into it any more. I can still access the other data via network shares and Sage works but the whs/sage server reboots every 2 hrs.
I am hoping someone who is familiar with WHS can tell me if I can just install XP pro over WHS since its really just a trimmed down version of MS Server 2003. I am hoping that If I just install xp pro like an upgrade it will preserve all the other data and folders on the C: drive.

[Fuzzy]

You can probably attach the drive to another PC and pull the files off. I don't think there's anything special about the C drive, and I think it's just a standard NTFS volume. Might even be able to get at the files iwht a linux boot disk or womthing ot that effect, if you don't feel like breaking open the case.

[davephan]

You could buy another drive and a USB hard drive case. Use the new drive for the Windows XP Pro install and put the old WHS drive in the USB hard drive case. Build the XP Pro OS from scratch and install SageTV from scratch. During the build and periodically during the service life of your computer take images of your C drive. Store the C drive images on one of your video storage drives. Do not store the image files on DVDs, since the recoveries will sometimes fail using DVDs for image file storage. You will then be able to easily recover your system back to a working state with the image files if you run into problems. You do not have that easy recovery option with WHS, with is a major downside to using WHS.

Copy the files you need from your old WHS drive to your new Windows XP Pro C drive. When you are done with your old WHS drive, format the drive. Copy the image files to the USB hard drive. You will then have two sets of image files with one set stored in a normally detached USB hard drive.

I assume the reason you were going to use WHS is to protect your video files from a single drive failure. You can still have video storage redundancy if you use RAID. RAID 5 is efficient, but a bit risky since you can only loose one drive. If a second drive fails before the failed drive is replaced and the rebuild is completed, you loose everything. Your RAID 5 drive performance is drastically degraded by about 70% while you run RAID 5 with one bad drive, which may or may not impact the ability for SageTV to function. You could loose everything if the wrong two drive fail with RAID 10. RAID 6 is probably the best option if your controller has RAID 6, since you can loose two drives without loosing everything, and is more efficient than using RAID 1 if you have more than four drives in a RAID 6 array.

My system board has two controllers. One controller can do 0, 1, and JBOD, the other 0, 1, 5, and 10. I use 10 drives, set up in RAID 1 drive pairs, which is the safest way given my drive controllers limitations. If I have two drives fail on the same drive pair, I only loose the contents of that one pair, the rest of the drives are still protected. I can have up to 5 drive fail, and all my video files are still protected if I don't have drive failures on the same drive pair.

Dave

[davefred99]

I have several reasons why i am going back to XP but mostly because WHS does not allow a way to back up your C: drive for recovery and I use a separate backup program for my data anyways. I never really used redundancy in WHS for DVD's or Music anyways. I make a backup DVD for all archiving so I don't need raid or anything fancy. I just want to keep things simple and use my Sage box as a basic server for recordings and media storage. WHS has some nice features but its also got some shortcomings too. If I want a dedicated server box in the future it will probably be a Linux Box. if i were brave I would try out the Linux based Sage Server but again I just want it to be simple and work without a lot of hassles.
Dave