Here is what to expect if you plan on a WHS 2011 Rig Upgrade. I found a new i7 PC w/ 8GB of 1600 MHz Ram for $400.00 USD so I jumped on it for a new faster WHS 2011 PC. This one is so much faster backing up my Main Rig (MR). Example: Old WHS Rig: ASUS: P5G41-M LX2 MB Core 2 Duo E7500 @ 2.93 GHz 2 x 2GB DDR2 Memory 1st MR BU took 28 hours. New WHS Rig: Biostar H61MGV3 MB i7-2600K Unlocked @ 3.4 GHz 1x8 GB Corsair DDR3 Memory (1600 MHz) 4TB WD Enterprise HDD (recycled from old WHS rig) 1st MR BU took 12 hours & included 100GB of more data. Here is what I found out trying to use the same WHS install & just move the HDD over... It doesn't work, neither would my WHS server BU (saved because it had all the updates installed) So I had to reinstall WHS 2011 from scratch & do all the (270) updates to get it current. On the 4TB drive it was a waste of money buying one that bug as WHS 2011 can only see 2TB of the disk Once WHS 2011 was installed the unused space on the 4 TB drive was not accessible to use for storage, using Computer Mgr. anyway.
Its not a bug; you need to format the HDD in GPT to get it recognized. To boot from GPT HDD, you need UEFI support.
Thanks for the link Tito, I copied it & printed it out to read, highlight & checked off points in the Prerequisites then got to... The warnings made me a bit nervous, I think I'll hold off the conversion for awhile as it is running really good ATM & I still have over 900GB of storage space left.
The procedure has been tested by me & other users numerous times successfully. Anyway, take your time.
Good advise, I needed plenty of time last night when I took my shot on a new WD 3TB drive that I installed a server BU on that I had made earlier yesterday. I found that WHS2011 doesn't make creating a "system repair disc" as W7 does, so the video tips were no good (for WHS2011), I planned on using the WHS2011 Install disc... big mistake, no choice to repair (only restore) so no command prompt (CP). I created 1 in W7 x64 & that worked for the first 2/3 of the process. I took many photos as I progressed. After finding some of the commands didn't work I ended up just typing into the CP (diskpart) "convert GPT", that worked so I... Bottom line, is I ended up restoring the backup I created yesterday & that setup is working as previously w/ the MBR partition style, so all is not lost. Think I'll wait awhile before trying this again, of just live w/ the smaller MBR partition style. The "gptgeb.exe" worked very good. Edit: I found & created a real WHS 2011 System repair disk, see below.
I know 'old' thread I wanted to update you all though. Last week I bought a 4x SATA power switch (SISUN PW4101 3.5") to add more capacity to the WHS 2011 rig (only have around 750 GB of space left). My plan is to just use the power switch to select a different HDD & backup the other PCs here (naturally w/ WHS 2011 installed on that other one also. My plan: Add a 2TB HDD for backing up the test rig 1 w/ a legacy BIOS setup. Add another 2TB HDD for backing up the tablet & 2 laptops that are GPT installations. Hope this works... BTW FRYs (brick & mortar store) had 2 TB WD HDDs on sale last week for $54.00 USD, seemed like a good deal for new models.
Here is a update: SUCCESS Switch works as advertised & instead of dual booting the server (not recommended) I can now just choose which (2 TB) Hdd/WHS2011 OS I want to run/use w/ each having specific PCs to backup. On test rig1 I backed up the OSs there (on 2 500GB Hdds) & restored them to a 1TB Hdd, sounds easy but getting the OSs to boot was a challenge, I pulled it off though & am stoked. I passed on installing any Hdd for GPT backup installations for Laptops & tablet, I felt it was overkill.
Just use my HyperV installation, and install a system able to manage the MBR disks in it, and connect the data disks in passtrough to it. Personally I don't have the large disk problem but I use that solution to have the deduplication functionality, and it works pretty well. P.S. one more thing: WHS-2011 isn't officially supported anymore, but the almost identical Win Storage Server 2008R2 Essentials is. Better to use the latter.
Thank you T-S (gone?) for the tip, I have several TechNet perpetual Win svr 2008R2 keys I will test in Hyper-V as you suggested & check-out how I like the Storage svr above.
so Win Storage Server 2008 R2 Essentials is repalcement for WHS 2011 and not WS2016? i planning to build one.
Not really. More advanced than WHS 2011. I use Win Storage 2008 R2 before, and use for iscsi.. I switch to FreeNAS has more overhead to do the work on iscsi..
WSS 2008r2 Essentials (aka Windows Home Standard) Is practically identical to WHS 2011 (aka Windows Home Premium) Except that WHS support is already gone, while WSS will be supported until 2020 WHS has a 10 users limit, WSS has a 25 users limit WHS can't Join a domain, WSS can WSS can be even a domain controller (unofficially) using the packages I made. WHS is greenish, WSS is bleuish (you can switch the theming swapping a single dll) On both of them you can install (unofficially) the WMC Please don't ask why the lesser version is called premium while the higher is called standard, nor why one is called 2011 while the other is called 2008r2, MS is really ugly in naming schemes