WHS 2011 on SSD and Drive Pool

jcoleky

I am new and have what is likely a simple question.  I have WHS2011 with the OS on an SSD.  I am considering installing drive pool for the pool drives.  Do i have to install DP before insalling the pool drives?  I only have one drive currenrtly.  Or can I finish populating my pool drive and later install the DP add-in..then install additional drives? 

Also, would like to know if DP will also use the extra space on the SSD in the pool, which I DO NOT want. 

Thanks!

Philmatic

It doesn't matter which comes first since you must add each individual hard drive to the pool one by one. It won't add the drives to the pool until you yourself add them.

If you have the entire SSD partitioned for the System drive (C:\), you'll be fine. I have a 120GB SSD and 20TB of pooled drives and they are completely separated.

Shane

Hi jcoleky. When you install DrivePool for the first time, its pool is empty. When you add a drive to the pool, that drive's free space becomes available to the pool - but any content already on that drive does NOT automatically become part of the pool (it remains where it is unless you move it into the pool yourself), and you can continue to use that drive as a normal drive.

DrivePool does not allowing adding the WHS system drive (normally "C:") to the pool. It does allow adding the WHS data drive (normally "D:"), but you don't have to use "D:" if you don't want it in the pool. Of course, if you only have one disk (e.g. your SSD) and don't want to add its drives to the pool, then your pool is going to remain empty until this changes.

(actually, hmm, I can't remember whether the WHS data drive is automatically added to the pool when DP is first installed, but if so you can always leave the pool empty until you can add another drive - after which you could then remove the WHS data drive from it)