Windows Home Server Build

I’m a digital pack rat. Well – mostly. My “junk” is really pretty organized – I just have a lot of it. Last November I upgraded my primary storage system to 4 TB and it’s done pretty well for me… hovering around 3 TB used. My secondary backup server carried the replaced 500 GB drives and it was handling its duty pretty well. Mostly. Last week some of those backup drives started complaining about disconnecting from the system and then finally just disappeared altogether. During this time I’ve been using Windows Home Server to perform backups of all of my laptops, desktops, media centers and virtual images… And quite well at that. Now I’m presented with my next hobby project – some out of necessity – part out of playtime. I’m going to try out consolidating my storage into a new storage server that I’ve planned to be expandable for quite some time. When all is said and done – I should be looking at about 13+ TB of available storage that will include backups.

Norco 4020 Case

I’ve now ordered up and should see next week the following rolling into my personal datacenter…

  • AMD Athlon 64 X2 5050e Brisbane 2.6GHz Socket AM2 45W Dual-Core Processor Model ADH5050DOBOX – Retail – Item #: N82E16819103298
  • SUPERMICRO AOC-SAT2-MV8 64-bit PCI-X133MHz SATA Controller Card – Retail – Item #: N82E16815121009
  • BYTECC 18″ Sata and Slim Sata Power 7+6pin Cable, for Sata Slim OD Model SATA-XP118 – Retail – Item #: N82E16812270183
  • Sony Optiarc Slim Combo Black SATA Model CRX890S-10 – OEM – Item #: N82E16827118018
  • NORCO RPC-4020 4U Rackmount Server Case – Retail – Item #: N82E16811219021
  • Western Digital Caviar Green WD10EADS 1TB SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5″ Internal Hard Drive – OEM – Item #: N82E16822136317
  • OCZ Reaper HPC 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 1066 (PC2 8500) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model OCZ2RPR10664GK – Retail – Item #: N82E16820227289
  • ASUS M3A78-EM AM2+/AM2 AMD 780G HDMI Micro ATX AMD Motherboard – Retail – Item #: N82E16813131324
  • CORSAIR CMPSU-620HX 620W ATX12V v2.2 and EPS12V 2.91 SLI Certified CrossFire Ready 80 PLUS Certified Modular Active PFC Compatible … – Retail – Item #: N82E16817139002

When I’m all finished up I’ll actually have a left over computer – which is usually what you should be using for a Microsoft Windows Home Server in the first place… But alas – with one bad backup system and the primary not touchable, this will be a migration effort. I’ll chronicle up the efforts here similar to how I managed through my HTPC build (which is still working out quite nicely!)

Be sure to keep an eye on these other great forum posts for similiar builds… (This case is just awesome no matter what you put in it…) – AVS Forum and Extreme Systems.

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