How to…..Install an External Hard Drive on Windows Home Server

Andrew Carr — Fri, 16 May 2008 05:49:08 +0000

Spring is here in the UK, the sun is shining and green stuff has started to sprout all over the place in a burst of new activity. Now seems the right time to spring into action myself and add some extra storage to my WHS. I have been keeping a wary eye on my server storage for some time and it’s got to the stage where I need to do something about it.

All you old home server hands won’t think that adding an extra hard drive to a PC is a big deal. Windows Home Server is introducing a lot of non-techy people to having a server in their home and this appears to be a good opportunity to walk through not only adding a drive to the WHS but assembling an external hard drive from separate components.

OK you can go and buy an off the shelf external USB hard drive and just plug it in, but where’s the fun in that? This way you get to hunt for a bargain and decide on the spec yourself.

Before you let your fingers do the wandering on the web a little bit of forethought and planning are needed. We have a bit of a chicken and egg situation here, as the type of external drive case will depend on the type of drive you are buying and how you will connect it to your server.

Lets look at the external hard drive connection to the WHS first. If you have bought an HP MediaSmart Server then around the back you have a choice of USB 2.0 and eSATA, (external Serial ATA) whereas lucky owners of the Fujitsu Siemens Scaleo have an extravagant two eSATA pots, So check your machine out and see what you’ve got.

At this stage I was really trying not to have to go into the difference between a USB2.0, SATA and SATA II (Or SATA 2) or that eSATA is a specification of SATA for external drives with a different connector and cable of 2 meters length as opposed to SATA with a cable length of 1meter. The main point is that eSATA II is faster than other types of external connections. See this article http://compreviews.about.com/od/storage/a/eSATA.htm and Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_ATA

Heres a handy list that shows the different speeds of various connections:

SB 1.1 – 15 Mbps
FireWire (1394a) – 400 Mbps
USB 2.0 – 480 Mbps
FireWire 800 (1394b) – 800 Mpbs
SATA 1.5 – 1.5 Gbps
SATA 3.0 – 3.0 Gbps (also know as SATA II or SATA2)

It makes sense to go for the fastest connection you have or can afford. If you have an eSATA then this will trump the USB for speed, so get an external hard drive with eSATA connection. In this case your choice of hard drive is going to be eSATA as well, this will keep the throttle wide open for data transfer.

If you just have USB2.0, as I do, then the sensible choice is an external box with a choice of eSATA and USB connection with an eSATA hard drive installed in it.

Now the purist server techs out there will say “but you are attaching it via USB 2.0 which only gives you 480Mbs rather than 3.0Gbps via eSATA2” However it is a trade off between what you have, what you want and what you feel comfortable doing to your server. I am going to leave upgrading to eSATA cards and port multipliers for another time!

The hard drive enclosure I found is a Sumvision 3.5″ USB2.0 eSATA Hard Drive Enclosure which can take up to 1TB SATA Hard Drives for £11.05. The case has an external eSATA port on the back and although at the moment I am connecting via USB it gives me an option to upgrade it to a direct eSATA connection in the future, and it’s black which will match my WHS! I also ordered a Samsung eSATA 750GB drive for £75.

OK so I have got all my kit to together and I look out of the window at a glorious sunny day, seems a shame not to get some rays, and just to show that us home server owners are able to negotiate the big wide world in RL so I am going to take the kit outside into the sunshine to do the hard drive assembly.

First up, let’s take a look at the external hard drive kit:

Included in this kit are, from top to bottom:

Hard Drive enclosure (with mini CD instruction manual)
Hard drive power cable
Hard Drive Stand (with a handy screwdriver enclosed with the kit)
USB cable
Power adapter
Mains cable

What you can’t see is the all important bag of screws and, inside the case, the hard drive carrier and eSATA cable. NB small bug in grass not included!

In this next picture we have a view of the back of the HD enclosure. On view from left to right is the cooling fan, eSATA connection, USB 2.0 connection, DC power in and on/off switch (yeah remember to ensure this is in the off position before you apply the power!)

First remove the four tiny screws on the back of the case, at this point it may be worth having a small receptacle to put these in as they will get lost! Try not to let the screws nearest the fan get inside the fan as they may be difficult to retrieve!

Now slide pull the back towards you to remove the hard drive carrier. The red cable dangling down is the eSATA hard drive connection cable.

So now for the hard drive. This is a Samsung 750GB SATA2 drive with a 32Mb cache:

Right now let’s get these two strapped together. With this particular drive and external case I found that it was easier to attach the power cable and eSATA cable to the hard drive BEFORE attaching it to the frame, it meant I didn’t have to fiddle with trying to attach the cables in a confined space.

It would be pretty hard to put the wrong cable on the wrong connector or even put the connector the wrong way round these are designed to be idiot proof!

So now slip the hard drive inside the plastic frame and use the supplied screws to attach it into place.

My advice at this stage is to not tighten the screws too tightly as this does mean you can slide the hard drive all the way down the frame to give you room to manoeuvre the cables into place at the other end, then tighten them fully. Now plug the red eSATA cable back into it’s connection on the circuit board. As you can see from this photo I threaded the power cables UNDER the eSATA cable as this makes it easier to slide inside the box.

Now gently slide the whole thing into the external case:

Things are a little tight when it comes to the eSATA cable as it’s a bit inflexible. Gently push it over to one side as you continue to slide the case over the circuit board… gently does it…….almost there.

Now secure the ends with the four screws you carefully put to one side. Again don’t let a screw get inside the fan opening!!

Right, so we are good to go. Now all we need is a home server. As my home server doesn’t get out much and it’s such a fantastically sunny day I’ve networked my Rhubarb patch and plugged the WHS in. Ready to go!

Attach the stand, plug the USB cable into the WHS and the hard drive case, plug in the power and and flick the power switch on the back of the hard drive case. The LED on the front of this model goes through a couple of colour changes as it powers up and identifies the drive before turning green.

Now we need to add the hard drive to the WHS so I just need to head inside and start up the WHS connector. As you can see the Samsung drive is appearing within the server storage area of the console:

Right click the drive and select Add:

The WHS Add a Hard Drive wizard starts. Click on Next to proceed:

As this is a new drive we are not too worried by the dire warning that all our files will be deleted. Click on Finish to format the drive.:

And wait a moment while its formatted:

And then added to the hard drive pool:

Fantastic! New hard drive successfully added:

1.36TB should last me for another 6 months or so!

So there you have it - a nice job for a sunny day, now I’ve just got to go and check my WHS for greenfly…and snails…and spiders…..mmm maybe its better off under the desk!

F-Secure Home Server Security Beta 2 Released

Terry Walsh — Fri, 16 May 2008 05:00:44 +0000

Over in Finland, F-Secure have released Beta 2 of F-Secure Home Server Security.

Beta 2 brings the following fixes and features:

Features

Sidegrade – conflicting products are automatically detected and the user is prompted to uninstall a conflicting product before proceeding with installation.
Configurable notifications – it is now possible to configure when the product sends notifications to the user via Windows Home Server Connector.

Bug Fixes

Subscription cannot be activated if the keycode has not been validated within 7 days [59588]
Infected files are deleted on a removable drive even if the action is set to “Quarantine automatically” [59678]
Error 1392 is shown when trying to open the quarantine [59748]
Incorrect notification is sent when the product malfunctions [59808]
Excluded file types are not removed as they should [59824]
The Apply button does not work in F-Secure settings dialog [59826]
“Not enough memory” error is reported to the event log while scanning a file [59958]
F-Secure settings get reset when other WHS settings are changed [59964]
FSHSS causes Remote Desktop connection to terminate [59965]
Some typos in the Settings dialog [59993]
Real-time scanning and automatic updates turn off without user actions [60001]
Quick check in the Scan wizard always shows 0 viruses found [59725]
The product may get malfunction after Scheduled scanning is enabled [59742]
Pressing “Check now” link doesn’t show any results [59686]
Scan archives setting is not available on the manual tab page in F-Secure settings [59986]

We reviewed Beta 1 a couple of weeks ago. If you want to apply for the beta, visit F-Secure’s website.

Add-In: WHS Mobile

Terry Walsh — Fri, 16 May 2008 04:58:30 +0000

WHS Mobile is a new add-in from prolific developer, Brent Friedman and promises a great new feature in the ability to configure your home server remotely from any Windows Mobile smartphone or Pocket PC.

The initial beta release kicks off with just two features:

Add/Remove UPnP Port Forwards while out of the house.
Enable or Disable UPnP Features via WHS Console Settings

but in the WGS Forums, Brent mentions a few of the features he’s planning for future releases, including:

Controlling FTP Manager.
Managing users.
Managing shares.
Putting the server to sleep.

If you’re a Windows Mobile user, then WHS Mobile could turn out to be a must-have add-in to manage your home server when you’re out and about.

More Info: Download | Support and Discussion

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How to…..Install an External Hard Drive on Windows Home Server

F-Secure Home Server Security Beta 2 Released

Add-In: WHS Mobile