Ditched Windows Home Server for Home Server 2011

So in yesterday’s blog post I talked about how I reinstalled Windows Home Server, the original version. Well tonight I ditched that and installed Windows Home Server 2011 RC (release candidate).

Why? Well, I talked to my buddy Rob Chartier and he told me to forget about Windows Home Server (original) because of all the improvements to 2011 (built in Windows Server 2008 R2 instead of Windows Server 2003).

I also figured out that the machine I installed on yesterday is a 64bit machine, so I could install 2011 without trouble. I downloaded the release candidate today and gave it a try. The install went great, much faster than yesterday, mainly because there were far fewer Windows Updates necessary.

I got the software configured and then spent some time getting the hard drives into the new external RAID tower that I picked up over the weekend. I then, with the help of my good buddy Subodh I got the RAID configured in a 1+0 format and started the process of creating the array. We’ll see how it works out 14 hours from now when it is scheduled to be done!