Failed mother board advice please...

[Sapper]

Hi all

Just came across this forum, maybe some one can give me some advice..

My original WHS set up/system seems to have failed.

The PC will not boot up properly with a mixture of error messages and freezes. I have changed the CMOS battery but no difference. Have tried booting it up with different hard drives and again no differences. Thoughts any one?

So I suspect the issue is a Mother board/CPU/Power supply issue... As i have had various issues with this mother board, I am thinking of starting from scratch.

I have not yet read the various threads/stories on WHS 2011 but if I were to rebuild from scratch would it be sensible to buy WHs 2011 to replace WHS ver 1.0?

Also, again I need to read the various threads but I do like the 'JBOD' approach of version 1. I gather other software developers have developed their own software for the JBOD approach for WHs 2011; are they worth while?

I was also thinking of buying the components for a new PC to be used primarily for photo editing using Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop. Would it be foolish to buy a more power full mother board/CPU for the task inhand; or should I keep the two uses completely separate?

My current Asus mother board has 6+3 SATA II connections, so would need at least this number, or i would have to buy a separate PCL HDD controller.

Any advice would be appreciated.

 

[Patrick]

Great question!

I would offer that this is a really good opportunity to decide what you want. I would offer that WHS v1 is still very viable. With that being said, if you want to invest in making something that is scalable you have a lot of options and things to consider. For example, do you want to stay with WHS or might something like FreeNAS be better for you?

Some basic thoughts:
1. How much storage capacity do I need today, in 12 months and in 24 months?
2. How much (and of what kind) of raw storage do I have today (e.g. 9x 1TB drives)
3. Do you want to do anything else with the server? One example would be if you ever start needing an After Effects render farm node. (it does not sound like you do now)
4. What do I want from a platform? (Easy media plugins, familiar windows interfaces?) Also, why do you need something better than WHS v1?
5. What kind of performance do I want?
6. How much do I want to spend

My guess is that answering the above is going to be very informative. There are boards with 10+ onboard ports and 8 ports cost under $100 on a good controller so I would look more to stepping back now and doing a good job sizing before thinking hardware.

On the WHS 2011 there are things like StableBit DrivePool, FlexRAID and a bunch of others that one can use. I would offer that you look at those after you do the sizing exercise and if you decide WHS 2011 is right for you (WHS v1 may very well be fine for you right now which would make that moot for example.)