Hi everyone, I have been reading these forums for a while and am keen to get your opinion as I am indecisive at the best of times. I am looking to build a WHS in order to store my photos, music and movies. This will then be accessed from multiple Win7 PCs, XBox 360, HTPC and other devices. The first decision to make is which OS do I use. Would you recommend sticking with WHS V1 PP3 until Vail goes RTM? At the moment as this will be storing data that I do not wanting to risk losing and see Vail being an risk whilst it is still in development. Thoughts please. Then we come to tasty bit as I decide which hardware to use. I want it to be capable as I am sure even if I stick to V1 now I will no doubt upgrade to V2 in the future. I don't want the H/W to be overkill as I don't want the system to be too power hungry but I do want it to be capable. Choice 1 Processor - Intel i3 530 2.93 Ghz Socket 1156 Details Motherboard - Intel H57 mITX (DH57JG) Details Memory - 2 x 2GB Corsair DDR3 1333MHZ (TW3X4G1333C9DHX) PSU - Corsair 450W Details Choice 2 Processor - Intel Atom D510/ D525 or N550 (if I could find somewhere that sold the N550) Motherboard - I will look into this if we decide that the Atom is the way to go. Hard Drives. The case I am looking at (Lian Li PC-Q11 Site) can hold 2 x 3.5" and 2 x 2.5". For this reason I was planning on having 2 x 1TB or 2 x 2TB for the actual storage and then 1 x 2.5" drive for the OS and apps. Any suggestions for the storage drives would be greatfully recieved at the moment I am looking at 7,200 rpm Samsung Spinpoint F3. Once again thanks in advance for your suggestions
For sharing media you'd probably be okay with lower RPM hard drives, WD Green and the like. Quieter and cooler running than the F3s.
Agreed. The bottleneck will be your network anyway, so the 5400 rpm drives will be fine... and as already said, quieter and cooler.
I used WHS but switched to freenas and love it. You would also be able to run the os off a usb stick. Choice 2 will be fine, you don't need any serious hardware for the server, as pookeyhead said the network will be the limiting factor.
Is it only for file storages? If so Freenas would be better. If (like myself) you want to use it as a mymovies server with automated image backups of all client machines etc then WHS is great. Personally I'd wait until VAIL arrives so you can support volumes over 2TB
tried WHS on a small Dell system and didn't like it. Ended up building a FreeNAS based box on a Intel Atom D510 board and totally love it.
Thanks for the feedback so far guys. Good point on the lower rpm drives. Has anyone seen any good tests for 5400 rpm drives which shows performance heat and power? I was tempted by Freenas but as I will be backing up my pc's and would like the functionality of being able to manage it from my new Windows phone 7 via the aps I think WHS is the way to go for me. This being the case I think the remaining question is what processor
