There will soon be a new addition to my family - of Dell computers. That’s right, I ordered yet another PC from the Dell Outlet. If you can’t tell, I’m a fan! Dell is currently offering up some coupons for 20% off Outlet Studio and Inspiron desktops and laptops. The coupon code for desktops is JHVPVHZZ6PKR92 and the code for laptops is 75K5$$WL2Z1FWS and I believe they expire on 1/28/2009.
I’ve really been looking hard into getting a Windows Home Server set up but I just didn’t want to spend the money on an HP MediaSmart Home Server even though I’ve heard good things. So I decided to look into other ways I could get one setup. Newegg currently offers Windows Home Server with Power Pack 1 for only $94.99 so I started looking into ways I could build a home server.
I found a nice post over at Home Server Hacks that entailed building a compact home server using the Shuttle KPC K45 barebones kit. I already have a 500GB hard drive that I’m not using right now so I didn’t need to buy the hard drive he suggested and therefore, my price was about $272 shipped for all the parts that I would need. Even though I felt this was a pretty good price, the idea that I could only have 2 internal hard drives in the KPC K45 was a setback for me so I decided to look at other options. That was when I discovered the coupons above for the Dell Outlet.
I ended up finding a pretty nice machine for a really good price. It’s an Inspiron 530 with a Pentium E2220 Pentium dual-core processor and 4GB of 800MHz RAM. It also comes with the 64BIT version of Vista Home Premium although I will be installing Windows 7 on it. Since this is a more powerful machine than my Dimension E521, I will be using it as my backup/test machine and retiring the E521 from being a PC and making it into a Windows Home Server.
Since I can go a few days without a backup/test machine I decided to go ahead and install Windows Home Server on the E521. I don’t have an actual copy of WHS yet so I downloaded the trial version off of the Windows Home Server website. The install was pretty painless and I didn’t have any problems along the way. After the WHS install completed, I installed the drivers for the E521 from the Dell Support site and was on my way to adding the WHS to the network.
The next step was to install the client software on my other PCs. The software is located in a shared folder on WHS aptly named “Software.” My two PCs, the XPS 420 and my Acer Aspire One Netbook (with Windows 7 installed), had no problems installing the client software and I was able to configure the daily backups very easily on both. Next, I started the process of moving my files off of the XPS 420 and onto the WHS. So far I’ve moved over my photos and music and my documents will soon be placed on the WHS as well.
In the meantime I happened to stop by a local Best Buy store because I was planning on getting the 1TB Seagate hard drive they had on sale for $99.99. 
While this isn’t the greatest price for this drive I had some gift cards that I’ve been wanting to use so I decided that would be the purchase I would make. While I was there I was surprised to find the 1.5TB Seagate ST315005N1A1AS-RK internal Serial ATA drive retail kit on sale for $127.99 (this drive is currently not even available Best Buy’s). This was the first I had seen of a retail version of the ST31500341AS OEM drive that I had purchased from Newegg not too long ago so I decided to shell out an additional $28 to get 50% more space. I installed the drive in my E521 and went to the WHS Console and was very pleased when it added the drive to WHS in under a minute. The OEM drive took at least 7 hours to format when I added it to my XPS 420!
Next I promptly went out and enabled the “Duplication” feature of WHS on the shares that I didn’t want to lose in case one of the drives failed. I also set up some user accounts for some of my friends so we could easily share files using the WHS remote access. I think I got at least one of them on board with giving WHS a test drive as well!
My next task was to enable WHS to share Recorded TV with my XPS 420. This proved to be a little difficult but thanks to a great write-up by Richard Miller on The Green Button I was able to get this working properly. I have a lot of movies that I recorded on my premium HD channels that I want to keep so I decided to go ahead and move them over to the home server.
That’s where I’m at so far after a few days of working with Windows Home Server. So far I’m very impressed and will be purchasing the software shortly. I love the fact that WHS pools all of your hard drive storage so you don’t have to have separate drives and I also love the ability to duplicate your files across the multiple hard drives in your home server. Also, being able to have nightly backups performed without any intervention from me is nice. I no longer have to worry about remembering to schedule my XPS 420 backups with the built-in Windows backup program.
7 Comments until now.
Congrats on moving to WHS.
Don’t sell the external you can easily add that drive to WHS as well.
I’ve thought about doing that but I already have some other internal SATA drives that I will be adding to the WHS as soon as I get the data moved over and the external just became expendable.
I am about to switch from a Shuttle K45 for my WHS to my Dell E521 (needed a PCI-E slot for my Rosewill RSV-S5 enclosure). Which drivers did you use for WHS (XP or Vista)? Any help is greatly appreciated.
I used XP drivers for everything.
Thanks for such a fast response. I will make the transition as soon as my new desktop arrives to replace the E521. Can’t imagine life without WHS!
[...] I hadn’t already set up one of my old PCs to be a Windows Home Server, I would be all over this deal. If this sounds like a deal you want to take advantage of, act fast. [...]
[...] may remember from a previous post that I set up an older Dell PC to be my Home Server and I couldn’t be happier with it. If you [...]
Comment!