I started off with three hard drives, two 500gb and one 1tb drive. I didnt know that when you install Windows Home Server, it creates a 20gb partition on the first drive (the OS drive) and doesnt get used for anything else. This really sucks because I have a 445GB chunk of hard drive space I cant use. WHS will start putting data into that part of the “pool” only as a last resort when the other drives are full.

Right now I have four hard drives in my hard drive pool as it’s called. I added another 1tb drive, the WD “Green” drive.

Here are some screen shots:

I already had the case… which I bought about a year ago with the hopes of building a media centre pc, that didnt go over to well. After I scrapped that I decided I would build a WHS system for our home network. Since all I had was a case, (you can check it out here, its the silver one) I needed to buy everything else.

Here is my parts list:

Motherboard: Gigabyte MA74GM-S2

Processor: AMD Athlon 64 X2 5600+ (About 2.9GHZ)

Memory: OCZ SLi 2048MB PC6400 DDR2 800MHZ (2x1024MB)

PSU: 585W No name silver box (Orion I think)

Hard Drives:

• 1 x Seagate ST3500320AS (500 GB)
• 1 x Seagate ST3500410AS (500 GB)
• 1x Hitachi HDT721010SLA360 (1 TB)

And of course the OS is Windows Home Server with Power Pack 1.

The build went very smoothly, the motherboard is labeled perfectly. There were no problems with attaching the case leds, power switch or reset switch. The motherboard has 6 SATA connectors which is perfect right now. I have plans on adding another 1-2 TB hard drives later on.

I decided to go with AMD because of the price point. I picked up the processor and motherboard for $200 combined, which I think is a very good deal for a 2.9ghz dual core processor, and for a motherboard that has very few complaints.

Integrating it into our existing network was also a breeze. I decided to keep it wired, and connected it to our router. Right now we only have a G network, but will soon be upgraded to N by the end of the week. After a couple days of doing the nightly backups, a speed increase is definately in the works. Transfering 700GBs of Movies/Pictures and home video isnt a speedy operation on a wireless G network.

Well, thats my little home server adventure thus far. I’ll leave you with some screen shots.