I am not sure how many members have used or are using Windows Home Server on TE. I adopted WHS a couple of years back and the feature which made me adopt it was Drive Extender which basically allowed a user to simply plug in a new drive and add it to the storage pool when you run out of space. No drive letters, no nothing. This was a boon with NAS and I grew my storage from about 2TB to 10TB in less than no time. This makes it very easy for media streaming when your library is shown as one and you don't have multiple drives to explore when browsing through your media. However, something bit MS and they have now decided to discontinue DE in the upcoming upgrade to WHS currently codenamed Vail. According to MS, DE was not compatible with drives above 2TB which is why they have decided to do away with DE.
Now, I am in the process of getting myself a server chassis with 24 Hot Swap HDD Bays and other server grade components to give my media a permanent and scalable home. I decided on the components and before I was ready to get them, I had to find an alternative to WHS's DE and came across FlexRAID. Basically this with its FlexRAID View is the answer to WHS's DE. Some are also claiming that FlexRAID is better than the original DE as it protects your data and not drives. The best part about FlexRAID is that you don't need a RAID array for it to work and its compatible with Windows and Linux. For example, if like me, you have 4 2TB drives in your system and have your movies and songs all over the 4 drives. When you browse your files, you will have to go through multiple drives and multiple directories. However, with FlexRAID installed and FlexRAID View configured and running, you can have a single Virtual Folder called Movies and all your movies from the 4 drives, will be accessible as one! Ditto for your Music and Photos. I have been trying this for the past few days and found no issues. No data loss, no corruption and I am not running any RAID. This was tried on a desktop machine running Windows 7 x64. One other feature of FlexRAID which I have not yet tried is that you can also combine a Network Share as a Spanned Drive. Its flexible to the core. You need to go through the forums of FlexRAID for the tutorials and examples. The possibility is endless.
I am now going to order the components for my server and will install Windows Server 2008 R2 and FlexRAID and hope to have a permanent solution to my always expanding data.
Edit: If you want more information about FlexRAID - What is so much cool about FlexRAID-View?
Now, I am in the process of getting myself a server chassis with 24 Hot Swap HDD Bays and other server grade components to give my media a permanent and scalable home. I decided on the components and before I was ready to get them, I had to find an alternative to WHS's DE and came across FlexRAID. Basically this with its FlexRAID View is the answer to WHS's DE. Some are also claiming that FlexRAID is better than the original DE as it protects your data and not drives. The best part about FlexRAID is that you don't need a RAID array for it to work and its compatible with Windows and Linux. For example, if like me, you have 4 2TB drives in your system and have your movies and songs all over the 4 drives. When you browse your files, you will have to go through multiple drives and multiple directories. However, with FlexRAID installed and FlexRAID View configured and running, you can have a single Virtual Folder called Movies and all your movies from the 4 drives, will be accessible as one! Ditto for your Music and Photos. I have been trying this for the past few days and found no issues. No data loss, no corruption and I am not running any RAID. This was tried on a desktop machine running Windows 7 x64. One other feature of FlexRAID which I have not yet tried is that you can also combine a Network Share as a Spanned Drive. Its flexible to the core. You need to go through the forums of FlexRAID for the tutorials and examples. The possibility is endless.
I am now going to order the components for my server and will install Windows Server 2008 R2 and FlexRAID and hope to have a permanent solution to my always expanding data.
Edit: If you want more information about FlexRAID - What is so much cool about FlexRAID-View?
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