WHS Reliable Hardware?

["mwgardner2000" <groups@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hello,

I have a home built Windows Home Server V1 box. I'm very happy with the
functionality of WHS (the PC backup feature has saved the day on more than
one occasion!), but I'm getting increasingly frustrated with the
reliability of the system and the hardware in particular. WHS often reports
disk failures, but when I go in and have a look, everything seems fine. By
often, I mean several times a day.....

The box has an 8.2TB storage pool and comprises:
- Asus M2N32 WS Professional mobo
- 2.40 gigahertz AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core
- 4 GB RAM,
- Highpoint 1820 PCI disk controller
- Highpoint 2320 PCI disk controller
- WD 500 GB disks (4 WD5000YS)
- WD 1TB disks (3 x WD10EACS)
- WD 2TB disks (2 x WD20EADS)

The reliability problem has been over an extended period (including when
the box was previously running Windows 2003 SBS), and over time changes
have been made to improve things. I have had at least 3 disks exchanged by
WD (can't fault their service on that) but my suspicions as to the root
cause of the problems have for a long time centred on the controllers. The
controllers on the mobo in particular seem to be flakey (NVIDIA nForce
590/570/550 Serial ATA Controller and Marvell 614x SATA2 Controller) and
installing the Highpoint controllers seems to have helped.

However, the latest problems being reported by the system relate to the 1TB
drives which are all on the Highpoint 1820 controller. WHS reports a disk
failure; the console show the disks as missing, but without intervention
the console updates and everything looks normal again.

There have been some postings on here about enormous WHS servers (Phil!)
and I'm wondering if anyone else sees reliability issues? What hardware do
others use in their WHS home built boxes?

Whilst I like the functionality, I'm reluctant to invest in new PC hardware
and am thinking of going for a large NAS instead. I will keep a WHS in some
form for the PC backup functionality if nothing else.

Any ideas / comments / suggestions welcome!

Cheers
Mark




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