WTF? WHS?

I went ahead and setup a Windows Home Server.

I know what everything is thinking: "You just did that because you now work for Microsoft. Nice glass of Kool-Aid."

Yeah, yeah. I have reasons. No, really I do.

First: Goals

I needed a place to store my files, a central location where I can not only keep everything [pictures, tv, movies, documents, etc] but also keep some of those replicated on more than one drive. I also wanted to have my machines backup automatically, but that was a second priority for me. As long as I don't lose personal data, I could care less if I have to reinstall my OS.

Second: Restrictions

In a perfect world, I would be able to go out and buy a new server. Or maybe even build one. But in my case, I had to use what I had around the house. Seeing that I only have two extra computers: a 4+ year old Motion Computing Tablet and a 1+ year old Mac Mini. I knew I would have use the Mac.

Based on what I wanted and what I had to work with; the only solution I saw was to setup a Windows Home Server (WHS). I had read so much about them for the past year or so, great reviews.

I was not sold on it just yet.

Why do I need a special OS and not just a XP/Vista machine with shares?

Windows Home Server allows me to have a drive pool. Normally if you have multiple drives, they show up as different drives. BUT with WHS, it pools the drives together. It appears as one large drive, a sudo RAID. It also allows you to replicate a share across more than one drive, to help protect against data loss.

Yeah thats all that matters to me; that sold me.

Its nice to have a compact, quiet server.

Next step is to get some add-ins...