Originally posted by: Garet Jax
The top reviewe at newegg says that it doesn't support RAID, but then goes on to say that he added an internal RAID card. Can I take this as him saying WHS doesn't support RAID for onboard controllers and will allow you to run disks in RAID as long as the RAID card is an add-on?
It's not as much about "supporting" RAID and MS is wanting people you use the "Drive Extender" and "Duplication" features within WHS. This works out to a kind of software RAID 1 (mirrored) array without the need for special hardware or the need for identical capacity harddrives. If you go to with We Got Served (
http://www.wegotserved.co.uk/ ) or the WHS Forums at Microsoft (
http://social.microsoft.com/Fo...ory/WindowsHomeServer/ ) we will see the are a number of people using either motherboard based or hardware RAID setups. I think MS is just saying it isn't necessary for WHS. While this maybe true, some don't want to lose the storage capacity that the WHS psuedo-RAID 1 feature gives. Hence the desire for RAID 5. On the other hand, with WHS you can specify which files/folders you want to protect with the "Duplication" feature thereby limiting your storage requirements. This isn't possible with software/hardware RAID 5. If the data is on the RAID array it's on it.
Right now, I'm looking to set up a motherboard based RAID 1 array for the main harddrive (holding the OS) and let WHS take care of the rest utilizing the "Duplication". We'll just have to see how it works out.
By the way, I have contacted 3ware and Areca about drives for WHS. Both said they don't have any but you could try the either the XP, Vista, Server 2003 or Server 2008. As noted by the previous post, this certainly can work.
Here is Areca reply to my question:
Dear Sir,
we don't have a driver package specially designed for this Windows edition.
we have driver for XP, 2003, Vista and 2008. if your OS compatible with any one of them, you will able to use the driver for your system.
as i known, the home server is developed based on 2003, if there have no any special limitation, you should able to use the 2003 driver on it.
or you can also contact with MS for more detail about this OS ability and limitations