Hope that helps someone.

I also agree with Jaymz. The market for WHS wasn’t the enthusiast/techie it was the average home user who will buy one of the WHS boxes at BestBuy and will only touch it till they need to add a drive.

How is it any worse than running the computers in a domain with a domain controller? One user name, one password used every where. Hmm not to much differnt from what is done on secure corporate networks.

“You can only copy files smaller than the available free space on the initial DATA volume at any given time.”

Not a bug, just a design limitation. I explain why it does this, and if you’re aware of it before setting up your own DIY Home Server, you can do something about it – ie, use a bigger drive.

“10 or more drives in this thing, you’ll find performance is going to crawl. You’ll forever see the “Balancing Storage” status in the Home Server console.”

Part bug, part design limitation. Enthusiasts were never the target audience for WHS, it just turned out that enthusiasts were the ones to start snapping WHS up first. Every OEM WHS solution I’ve seen so far hasn’t differed from 4 to 6 drives. I’ll elaborate more on that in a tic..

“The other issue is that if the drives are forever active, then they’re more likely to burn out and die quicker!”

This isn’t a bug, or a design limitation. It’s common goddamn sense. Hard drives die. Fact of life. The more you use something, the more it gets worn out. Sticking with the 4-6 drive rule helps to postpone the inevitable.

“Drive Migrator appears to be rather unforgiving with performance and reliability.”

Yes, if you go crazy like I did, and slap 10 drives at the sucker. I see this as a design limitation – Drive Migrator doesn’t scale well, because I guess the WHS team didn’t perceive home users having racks of SANs attached to OEM solutions in the home.

Okay, that deal with – let me explain my viewpoint here. First off, none of my “rules” or Charlie’s “bugs” really apply to the OEM solutions, because they’re relatively small scale. Except for maybe the drive removal thing, but that’s more of a personal habit after the beta builds bit me pretty nastily doing what I described.

Furthermore, WHS isn’t your typical fileserver or DIY NAS OS, so you shouldn’t try design a system for a typical fileserver or DIY NAS OS. This means buying larger drives, as opposed to arrays of smaller ones, not using RAID solutions, and not getting old rackmount PCs off eBay complete with matching SAN enclosures, or using your Grandmother’s old 933MHz Celeron whitebox. It works differently, and I’m pointing out those differences to better aid in designing a good WHS solution. That’s all.

Logon names on Home Server should be the same names used on the Home Computers! A hacker’s dream for sure!

Logon names on Home Server should be the same names used on the Home Computers!

A hacker’s dream!

Nobody in any security field, would ever demand both your PC client and your home server use the same password! But, that’s what’s WHS is asking for…

It’s easy to see where this is leading too… both client and server exploitation!

Microsoft claims, “with Windows Home Server you can connect to your family’s documents, photos, videos and music virtually wherever you are”, except for the fact many Internet Service Providers are blocking WHS.

Keep in mind, anyone trying to get around, such as attempting to bypass their Internet Service Provider for evading the “AUP” Acceptable Use Policies” agreement can get themselves terminated by their ISP.

Something to bear in mind when using WHS…

What reasonable and concerned enthusiast would consider data corruption to be overlooked as Microsoft pitches “with Windows Home Server your family’s files and computers are backed up automatically every day, so you can have peace of mind”, to be acceptable or even considered a reliable way?

1) You can only copy files smaller than the available free space on the initial DATA volume at any given time.

2) 10 or more drives in this thing, you’ll find performance is going to crawl. You’ll forever see the “Balancing Storage” status in the Home Server console.

3) The other issue is that if the drives are forever active, then they’re more likely to burn out and die quicker!

4) Drive Migrator appears to be rather unforgiving with performance and reliability.

Now we know why there is the annoying 10 user limit…

It sounds like to me WHS needs even more voodoo to make it work than previous Windows server incarnations.

WHS is a step in the wrong direction when you need to limit the number of drives you can stick in the machine because of a feature of the operating system.