jonathanc Posted July 13, 2010 Share Posted July 13, 2010 Right, I know there are some very talented IT people in here so I hope I could get an advice on this one. Basically I built my own WHS server a while ago and it has given me nothing but problems! I am thinking of buying the HP WHS based Home Server and somehow migrating my current server over. Basically what I want to do it just to "move" all my files and folders over without having to copy them over. I am thinking of achieving this by physically moving HDDs over. I've googled and can't get any definite answer on this. I am wondering if this is somehow possible? edit: for more information I have an external SATA HDD that I use to backup WHS itself. This is a SATA HDD Caddy so I can just pull the whole HDD out anytime. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JustGav Posted July 13, 2010 Share Posted July 13, 2010 Hmmm, I'm not sure it is possible, I stand to be corrected, but I believe you have to do an upgrade and then point to the discs. I personally have not been brave enough to try it with WHS as I suspect disk migrator will probably have a field day chomping through and deleting the data. I ended up copying 4TB over a gigabit ethernet to my infinitely more stable linux setup. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Scott Posted July 13, 2010 Share Posted July 13, 2010 If you move the drives physically the only issue I can see is with the WHS install. Windows seems to be hardware specific now with its installs. IIRC it is motherboard changes that causes the problems. I have been lucky once, in that changing the motherboard didn't effect the install. Every other time I have had to re-install windows. How many drives do you have? Is WHS on a seperate one from the bulk of your data? If so, just re-install without the other drives in place then put them in and set up your shares once running. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JustGav Posted July 13, 2010 Share Posted July 13, 2010 If you move the drives physically the only issue I can see is with the WHS install. Windows seems to be hardware specific now with its installs. IIRC it is motherboard changes that causes the problems. I have been lucky once, in that changing the motherboard didn't effect the install. Every other time I have had to re-install windows. How many drives do you have? Is WHS on a seperate one from the bulk of your data? If so, just re-install without the other drives in place then put them in and set up your shares once running. Doesn't really work like that, WHS sets up fake shares and then shuffles data round, it really isn't the most intelligent thing, works just fine UNTIL you need to change something.... (I think by the way, this is just from the fun and games I've had with mine) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Scott Posted July 13, 2010 Share Posted July 13, 2010 Ahh, I'll stick with regular old Win7 then I think. I've had XP, Vista and Win7 on my "Server" (it's actually just a PC with loads of space, no monitor or keyboard) and never had any hassle like that. Is it bad that I assumed a server edition of an OS would be simpler to manipulate Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JustGav Posted July 13, 2010 Share Posted July 13, 2010 Ahh, I'll stick with regular old Win7 then I think. I've had XP, Vista and Win7 on my "Server" (it's actually just a PC with loads of space, no monitor or keyboard) and never had any hassle like that. Is it bad that I assumed a server edition of an OS would be simpler to manipulate It is based on Win2003 SBS edition, but they ripped out the domain sections and added WHS bits. It would be nice if they left in single instance store (SIS) and a few other features but while it is cute it is severly limited and potentially data-losing when things go wrong with it. I've gone down the geeky linux route running multiple volumes with DRBD sync to my secondary box, and it is much nicer, BUT I do spend most of my life at a command line so it isn't too much of a change for me. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jonathanc Posted July 13, 2010 Author Share Posted July 13, 2010 meh... Well I think I've messed things up somewhere. Yesterday for some odd reason I decided to log into WHS and do a manual update. (Custom update via Windows Update). I've updated an AMD chipset driver and also several .NET updates and an Ethernet driver update. Today I found out that my Ethernet is missing from Device Manager. My whole system is also very sluggish. I did some Googling and found out that I must have messed up the drivers. I tried manually installing the LAN driver from mobo DVD but that didn't work. I think the only way is to reinstall ALL the drivers ie clean install of WHS. I put in the WHS DVD and boot from it and I got stuck in "Setup is initializing" loop. I googled again and this is apparently because of drivers issue... So here I am stuck. Don't know what I should do next... this is really frustrating at times and I wished I just got the HP HomeServer instead Any ideas what should I do now? Can't even reinstall WHS but I can boot into WHS still (but WHS is not working 100%) edit: I've also updated to latest bios. Thing is I don't know which drivers to install sometimes as my Mobo DVD installed mainly supports XP onwards... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JustGav Posted July 13, 2010 Share Posted July 13, 2010 Make a backup, and just copy the data over to a more suitable NAS system...It will only end in tears if you play too much with WHS and it gets its destructive head on.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jonathanc Posted July 13, 2010 Author Share Posted July 13, 2010 Make a backup, and just copy the data over to a more suitable NAS system...It will only end in tears if you play too much with WHS and it gets its destructive head on.... Yeah I was thinking of doing that too but that would mean I would have to get (for example) the HP Homeserver + a few more HDDs? I have 5 HDDs attached to my WHS at the moment (1 not in the pool for WHS server backups). The HP homeserver only supports 4 HDD with 1 already in use by the system so I have 3 free... Not sure how that will work :S Is there no way to rectify the driver problem? Can I manually uninstall all the drivers and reinstall them? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JustGav Posted July 13, 2010 Share Posted July 13, 2010 Yeah I was thinking of doing that too but that would mean I would have to get (for example) the HP Homeserver + a few more HDDs? I have 5 HDDs attached to my WHS at the moment (1 not in the pool for WHS server backups). The HP homeserver only supports 4 HDD with 1 already in use by the system so I have 3 free... Not sure how that will work :S Is there no way to rectify the driver problem? Can I manually uninstall all the drivers and reinstall them? Hmmmm, I'm of a different thought, I prefer to 'roll my own' and for the cost of an atom board and a few 2TB drives. My particular OS choice has to be linux variants, BUT for off the shelf the HP stuff isn't bad. As far as the drivers go, you 'should' be able to force them in via safe mode, but again WHS has some very odd quirks. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jonathanc Posted July 13, 2010 Author Share Posted July 13, 2010 aye... I've read guides before proceeding with my DIY Home Server and I chose (apparently) the best mobo + cpu for the job. I've nothing but problems from day 1 and I am just getting very frustrated. If it's not the precious data stored (I have over 5 TB of data) I would have just junked this machine. WHS is slowing down so much at the moment takes ages to log in. The weird thing is that the LAN port lights are on but its just not showing in WHS! I did an /ipconfig and it came out blank. I'm pretty sure its the manual updates I did that messed up everything. Thinking of the best way out now as I can't copy the files off WHS if I can't access the network. Gahhh hate technology sometimes oh, also I think WHS doesn't have a Safe Mode? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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