{"id":3193,"date":"2009-10-27T01:00:00","date_gmt":"2009-10-27T01:00:00","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2020-05-10T14:59:05","modified_gmt":"2020-05-10T13:59:05","slug":"diy-windows-home-server-build-jukebox-mkii","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/automatedhome.com\/reviews\/diy-windows-home-server-build-jukebox-mkii.html","title":{"rendered":"DIY Windows Home Server Build – JukeBox MkII"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s hard to believe, but its four and a half years since we built our first proper rackmount media server for the Automated Home.\u00a0 Our tutorial for the MkI is still one of our most popular articles and it’s easy to see why (you may like to read our tutorial on the original Jukebox server<\/a> first).<\/p>\n

It’s something that people are doing every day as they realise they need to move all their digital media to a central server that can be accessed by the many IP devices we have now come to rely on. The machine has served us well, but nothing lasts forever and this week we pulled the old girl out of the rack for a heart transplant.<\/p>\n

Time to Move On<\/strong> – Two things have forced the upgrade.\u00a0 Firstly the IDE architecture of the old machine meant sourcing older, more expensive hard drives every time we needed to add more storage.\u00a0 Although we had 8 drives in the old server they included small 120GBs, 160GBs 300GBs etc.\u00a0 We could replace multiple drives with a few inexpensive 1TB disks, freeing up bays and reducing running costs.\u00a0 Lately we’d even been adding external USB drives, which is far from ideal.\u00a0 It was clear we needed to move to Serial ATA and that the IDE drive caddies would need to go.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

The Old Server out of the rack (complete with USB drives on top) Ready for the Upgrade<\/p>\n

4 into 3 Does Go<\/strong> – While we’ve retained the old 4U rackmount case, we’ve up’d the density of the drives in the new build with the use of a couple of Icy Dock MB454 bays<\/a>.\u00a0 These allow you to squeeze 4 drives into each 3 drive space.\u00a0 You can even get a 5 into 3 version, but we should have plenty of capacity for another few years with the 8 bays this gives us, and the slightly lower density should help with cooling and increase the life of the drives.\u00a0 The Icy Docks aren’t cheap but they are a real gem.\u00a0 They give an almost Drobo-esque ease with which to add new drives (although you’ll still need to use a screw driver).<\/p>\n

\"Goodies<\/a>\u00a0 \"Empty<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Empty<\/a>\u00a0 \"WHS<\/a>
\nClick thumbnails above for full size versions<\/p>\n

More Power!<\/strong> – The second reason that forced the upgrade was the CPU.\u00a0 The VIA powered machine always struggled at anything more than basic file serving.\u00a0 100% CPU utilisation was commonplace and software that attempted to re-encode media on the fly for playback on our PS3 for example, sent the server into meltdown.\u00a0 We decided against one of the newer Intel i5 or i7 CPUs, instead opting for the more reasonably priced 2.60GHz Intel Pentium Dual-Core E5300<\/a>.\u00a0 It provides a good balance between power and economy and provides an enormous increase in grunt for the server.<\/p>\n

\"100%<\/div>\n
The Old Server was severely underpowered for anything past basic file serving<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
The ASUS P5Q Deluxe<\/a> motherboard we chose supports Core 2 Duo and Core 2 Quad processors too, giving a relatively inexpensive and simple upgrade path if we get serious about running virtual servers<\/a> on this box in the future.<\/div>\n

We fitted 4GB of Kingston HyperX DDR2<\/a> RAM and a Corsair HX 450W PSU<\/a>.\u00a0 This is the first time we’ve used a branded power supply in a build and is definitely worth a mention.\u00a0 For a few pounds more this really is a quality item.\u00a0 Sturdy build quality, ultra-quiet, huge range of connectors and with sockets meaning you only plug in the Molex, SATA Power and Floppy connectors you actually need.<\/p>\n

\"PSU<\/div>\n

Unlike the VIA EPIA board that powered the old server the Asus does not have built in graphics, but our spares box had plenty of old cards to choose from.\u00a0 The new hardware includes gigabit Ethernet ports so the server can take advantage of our recently upgrade gigabit Ethernet switch<\/a>.\u00a0 The eSATA port allows for future expansion outside the case too and firewire and USB ports are always useful.\u00a0 We’ve also moved from a board with a single slot to one with a variety of PCI and PCI Express slots, also allowing for the addition of more controllers and port expansion cards if necessary.<\/p>\n

\"Windows Home Server<\/strong> – The old server has run vanilla Windows XP Pro and been rock solid.\u00a0 We’re sticking with Redmond and installed Windows Home Server<\/a>.\u00a0 WHS is based on Windows 2003 Server with its code and features optimised for use in the home and a user limited of 10.<\/p>\n

We retained the most modern of the IDE disks from the old server (400GB) and installed it in one of the internal bays in the case for use as the OS \/ Boot drive.\u00a0 The install process is the normal Microsoft affair and takes around an hour.\u00a0 After that there’s the usual raft of critical updates, patches and optional software to install.\u00a0 Many hours and reboots later we were up and running with the latest Power Pack \/ Service Pack 2 (PowerPack 3 is due out of beta anytime soon and brings support for Windows 7).<\/p>\n

As many people who have been using a home server over the last few years know, once a drive holding say your CD rips is full, you are faced with a messy upgrade.\u00a0 With a regular desktop OS and no RAID setup, adding a new disk usually means adding additional shares, perhaps ‘Music1’ is joined by ‘Music2’ in the example above.\u00a0 This JBOD<\/a> setup is far from ideal, especially if you then have to reconfigure all your clients around the home like XBMC, Sonos etc to see the additional music.\u00a0 It’s not long before you have all sorts of shares, scattered across all sorts of drives.<\/p>\n

The advantage of WHS in this setup is that the smarts behind the scenes make all your drives appear as one large ‘storage pool’.\u00a0 Each new drive added simply increases the overall capacity of the pool creating more space for your existing Music or Movies or Photos shares, without ever having to create and manage new folders or re-configure the clients accessing them.<\/p>\n

As WHS formats each new drive when it’s added to the system pool, you can’t simply take NTFS drives full of data from an old machine and put them into a new WHS one.\u00a0 Although this wasn’t an issue for us as we weren’t re-using the old drives, its worth noting as you may need to buy a new drive or two if you are.<\/p>\n

Like Drobo, and unlike RAID this setup doesn’t care about mixing different drive sizes and models either.\u00a0 As long as you have empty drive bays, upgrading space is the 5-minute task of popping in a new disk.\u00a0 Once all your bays are full then its time to remove and upgrade a disk for a larger capacity model.\u00a0 This involves designating a disk for removal, requiring you to have enough space across your other drives to store its data, or if not then the temporary use of an external drive.\u00a0 For this reason it’s best not to wait until your drives are full before upgrading to a larger one.<\/p>\n

The Management<\/strong> – A few weeks ago we ran a story on a particularly impressive 20 terabyte home server<\/a> belonging to one Automated Home reader.\u00a0 Looking at his setup we made sure to install the excellent Disk Management add-in<\/a>.\u00a0 Amongst other things this allows you to create a wire frame graphical representation of your server.\u00a0 You need to do this right at the start though, then add disks one by one so you record where each physical drive is in your system.\u00a0 It’s then trivial to identify a drive if there’s a problem or it needs replaced.<\/p>\n