Set up & questions: WHS media server

["keyvan2r" <k1@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi

Inspired by the article on WHS install for a bigger media server solution;
I decided to go ahead and build one!!
I have been looking at this for a while. I looked at a RAID solution
(unRaid, etc..).I went with WHS for simplicty and the fact that I may run
either the MLserver from Cinemar and/or My Movies for movie management. So
WHS made sense.

Briefly my setup is:
Case: Corsair Obsidian 800D Case - 3x 140mm Fans with 4x Hot-Swap Hard
Drive Bays
PSU: Corsair 450W VX Series PSU - ATX12V v2.2
MB: ASUS P5Q3 iP45 Socket 775 8 channel audio ATX Motherboard
HD: Western Digital 1.5TB Hard Drive SATAII 7200rpm 32MB Cache Qty: 2
HD: Hitachi Deskstar 2TB Hard Drive SATAII 7200rpm 32MB Cache Qty: 2

I could provide a more detailed list if anyone is interested.

2 Questions:

1- RAM - Given WHS is a 32bit OS will it see memory beyond 3GB? Is there
any point in having 4Gb installed?

2- AHCI: This is for SATA drives, the Asus manual says this is an advanced
"better / faster?" way of talking to SATA HD's but it prohibits
the port from hosting IDE device (I assume SATA ROM drives).
When I set AHCI in BIOS for the HDs, windows gave me the blue screen of
death after copying from the OS Install DVD and then rebooting from the
hard disk and trying to continue the install from hard disk.
Is there any advantage to using AHCI?

Thanks

K



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