Ideal Setup / Drive Configuration

Symo

Hi all,

I'm in the middle of updating to WHS2011 from v1.  I have installed 2011 already and like it so far, I did so on a clean disk with nothing else plugged in, once it was running I plugged in my other 5 drives (somewhere around 9TB in total).  So I installed drivepool made D:drive part of the pool and have copied most of the data off one drive into the pool (which I then plan on formatting and adding to the pool, then repeating the process).

However, when I was just doing some reading now about what happens if you need to do a server restore (I'm pleased to know it sounds easy if setup right); I read a few things that I wasn't too sure about.  Baseline question is; is what I did right? (That being, adding the WHS D:drive to the pool and moving the data into the folders that were already setup there).  Or should I have made a new drive the DrivePool pool and made up folders myself.  And if setting up a separate pool with selfmade folders is the way to go, how does setting access to the folders go?  Do you have to manually set the access to each folder (i.e. through explorer, not through the folders section of the dashboard), and does media sharing go okay from stuff not in the WHS folders?

Thanks (I'm really glade there is alternatives to the lack of DE in 2011)
Symo

Shane

Hi Symo, there's no universal "ideal" config for DrivePool. Pick whatever works best for you.

Permissions should be fine via the dashboard, unless you want to customise individual folders within a share.

That said, my personal preference (currently) is to reserve solely for WHS's client backup system, since it has a 2TB limit anyway, and use the rest of my disks for the pool. We have "photos" and "media" shares, a personal share for each member of the family, and some other shares for backup images, software and work stuff.

If I had the space, I'd have duplication on for everything, but right now I just have it on for the personal, photos and work shares. Irregularly I backup the lot to external drives; eventually I plan to set up a private storage cloud, but that's a ways off.