5 replies to this topic

[KesterHouse]

Hi ho,

So I finally replaced my 8 year old home built PC with a new HP Pavilion HPE h8xt series deskop. The new system has arrived, and while I haven't even plugged the thing in yet, I'm planning to make some changes since some of the internal stuffs I wanted weren't available through the HP customization options. I mostly use the PC for MS Office stuff, image editing, and light web coding work, as well as a fair amount of online gaming.

The system comes with a 1TB internal HDD of unknown manufacture (probably Seagate, but I haven't checked yet), which I'll remove and use in an external HDD case. The plan is to replace that drive with an Intel 520 series 120GB SATA III SSD, since that unit provides a good balance between capacity and reasonable price. I've also got an Intel 320 series 40GB SATA II SSD that I'll install as a dedicated disk for the pagefile, temp files, etc.

The original plan was to partition the 120GB SSD with a 100GB "D:" partition to hold games and other applications, and a 20GB (more or less) "C:" partition to hold the System files and default Program Files folders. I'm wondering if that "C:" partition will be big enough (remember, the pagefile will be on a separate drive), or if it'd be better to make it bigger (or even use the entire SSD for "C:")? Perhaps drop down to a 60GB SSD just for the "C:" partition?

On my old Win XP systems I always banged away at the registry to move the "Program Files" default folder structure to a seperate HDD, but I don't believe that's possible with Windows 7 anymore - which leads to concerns regarding disk capacity. I intend to move the \Users folders to a separate drive as well (although I don't believe I can move the entire "Documents and Settings" profile structure like in the Win XP days), which means I'll need a 3rd drive to hold user data.

So here's the questions:

1) Approximately how much disk space is required for Window 7 (\System, \ProgramData) and "standard" applications (\ProgramFiles, MS Office 2010) folders on the C: drive?

2) For an additional HDD to hold "\Users" data (most of which will live on the WHS2011 shares anyway) and additional applications / games, would you recommend a second SSD, a WD VelociRaptor SATA III HDD, or simply a larger single SSD? Something else completely?

3) Have you seen a significant performance difference between using a SATA III SSD versus the new 64MB Cache, SATA III VelociRaptor series drives?

I'm curious because of the money involved, of course. Having just spent a fair amount on the H8XT (and I still need to install an appropriate gaming video card for ~$200), I don't want to go too nutso on more internal drives. Here's the current costs:

Intel 520 Series 60GB SSD: $120
Intel 520 Series 120GB SSD: $190
Intel 520 Series 180GB SSD: $255
WDC VelociRaptor 10k RPM 250GB SATA III: $170

I'm looking at a combo of either the 120GB SSD and the WD VelociRaptor for $360, or the 60GB SSD with the VelociRaptor for $290. The other alternative is to skip the SSD completely, and go a with a pair (for more spindles) of the VelociRaptors for $340.

Your opinions, experiences, and recommendations are welcome.
Thanks in advance,
-Jeff K.

[bobbyc]

@Jeff,

The first thing you need to do is create the recovery disks. Not sure if they are DVD or CD, but I just purchased a new HP for a client and the factory hdd crapped out after only 8 days. Fortunately, HP shipped a new hdd w/ recovery disks overnight. Even more fortunate was WHS 2011 was able to perform a complete BMR in less then 2 hours.

Also, you will need to include the drivers on your USB Recovery Key. There is a folder in the root of the C drive that contains all drivers needed for a system recovery, you can't miss it. Simply copy that folder into the root of the recovery key.

The HP desktop I just installed booted incredibly fast thanks to the new UEFI 'bios'. I guess an SSD will make it an instant on desktop. Sweet. If you want to just do a BMR from your home server, consider shrinking the c drive and doing a manual backup. WHS can only restore to a drive of equal or greater size.

[KesterHouse]

Hi ho,

Thanks for the tips regarding the new system, BobbyC. It's been an "interesting" few days if getting this thing configured... and yes, this post is pretty much me venting...

As you suggested, the first thing I did was create the recovery disks... but I used a 16G thumb drive instead of a set of DVDs. I also hit up the HP Support site and ordered a set of DVDs from them as well, just to be sure I'm covered. It's a little frustrating to spend over $1000 on a new PC, then have to wait another week and spend another $15 because they can't be bothered to include the disks, but oh well.

As for the disks I'm going to put in the system, I decided to go with the 120G 520 series SSD to hold the C: drive, retained the 1TB Seagate HDD as the D: drive, and added my 40G 320 series SSD as E: containing Temporary Internet Files, pagefile, Search indexes, and all user's Temp folder.

When the 120G SSD arrived, I started down the path of re-configuring the system. The existing C: drive was filled with over 60G of bloatware as delivered from HP, so I was going to need to significantly slim that down to allow the SSD to house the OS and new applications. Back in the Win XP days I was very familiar with re-arranging drives using Partition Magic, so I didn't think this would be a big deal on the new system. Wrong. Welcome to the wonderful world of uEFI systems and GPT disks...

Anyway, prior to installing the new SSD, I set about shrinking the installed 1TB disk's massive C: partition and created a new D: partition using Drive Manager, which worked fine. The next trick was to re-locate the \Users folder from C: to D: (not just the shared library folders, but the entire profiles directory structure). That also meant I needed to get the ProgramData folder off the C: drive as well, since that contains the Public shares, Default User profile, and the All Users profile.

With many hours spent in the registry, followed by re-creating all the Junction Points and Symbolic Links (as well as getting the permissions and attributes correct on the junctions and links), I ended up with a C: drive with 25G of data on it. In reality it's got under 20G, but that pesky hiberfil.sys file can't be relocated, so that's eating over 6G for now. The ProgramData folder and Users folder were moved to the new D: partition (the original HP_Recovery partition was retained, but I changed the letter to X: for now). The 40G SSD was also installed, and system properties and registry entries were altered to point all the Temp files, Search indexes, etc. to that little drive. I was ready to install the new SSD as the C: drive, and use the 1TB drive as the D: drive until I replace it later with another SSD or that Velociraptor. That's when things got VERY ugly...

The original 1TB drive was now configured with a 50G "C:\System" partition, a 20G "D:\Data" partition, and a 18G "X:\HP-Recovery" partition - nice and tidy, and easily able to fit on the new 120G SSD (111.7G available space). I downloaded the Intel Data Migration Tool, plugged in the new SSD and open the tool. Oops - The 1TB drive couldn't be selected as the migration source! The format is GPT, and Acronis doesn't know what a GPT disk is. Useless.

Next I tried EaseUS and Mini Tool's Partition Wizard. Both of these can recognize the GPT disks and the Disk Clone process appeared to work fine with both tools. The problem was that the resulting disk didn't contain the EFI System Partition or the Microsoft Reserved Partition (they had been cloned, but they were converted to simple GPT Data Partitions). Without those two partitions configured properly, she's a no gonna boot from that disk.

Ok then, I'll use Microsoft's internal backup program to create a system image, burn a system recovery disk, then restore the system to the new SDD. Nope - not gonna happen. The system image backup ran fine, but the uEFI system refused to boot from the DVD, regardless of how I set it up. It would boot from the HP recovery DVD just fine. No booting if I used the one I created with Win 7, and the same for the USB thumb drive I'd used to create my own set of HP Recovery media.

Depsite the hours of work to re-arrange the C: drive and split the OS over to drives, I decided to try the HP Recovery system restore to the new SSD. I figured that would at least re-create the EFI and MSR partitions, then I could use on of the partition tools to replace the C:\System partition and be back in business. The HP Recovery program will only recover the system to the original 1TB drive! Unbelievable!

So, the partition tools are useless. The user-created system image boot disk is useless. The HP Recovery disks are useless. I don't have a Windows 7 installation disk, because this is an OEM system, so running the WinRE Repair option is unavailable... or is it? I've got a WHS that can backup clients and do a BMR with a USB key! That'll work!

Erm... Not with GPT disks. @*$$%^!)#!!!

Deep breathes... Removed the SSD and the system booted up fine into the 1TB disk again so I installed the Connector and tried running a system image backup to the WHS 2011 box just to be sure. No joy - sits at 1% for 20 minutes then spits an Unsuccessful status. Verified as useless, thanks to GPT disks. Am I stuck with this 1TB Seagate drive as my boot device forever? Did I just waste $170 on a SSD? It was starting to look that way, but I wasn't done yet.

I still had that system image backup I'd created with Windows 7 stored on an external USB disk (which was an NTFS MBR disk). If I ran the Advanced System Recovery from with the control panel of Windows 7 the system would go through the steps, then restart and load the WinPE to access the proper recovery interface, but it couldn't find the proper drivers to allow me to select what disks to exclude from the recovery. No matter what drivers I tried, it never allowed exclusion, which led me to believe it was simply going to reformat and restore to the existing 1TB disk, which would do me no good at all. I had to get that 1TB disk out of the mix if I was gonna to continue to fiddle with recovery methods to ensure I didn't destroy it completely (I really didn't want to recreate all those junction points, etc. again). After lots of research and web study, I finally managed to get the system transferred to the SSD. I'm shocked this actually worked, but here it is...

With the system restarted and running fine from the OEM 1TB drive, I plugged in the SSD (using an external USB dock), then used Device Manager to remove all partitions on the SSD. Next, I opened Partition Wizard 7.1 (which is a free download, btw), and did a disk wipe of the entire SSD just to be sure all partition info was gone. The disk was still listed as a GPT disk, so I then coped the C:\System, D:\Data and X:\HP_Recovery partitions to the SSD. Those partitions were arranged to leave a few GB of unallocated space at the beginning of the SSD.

Next, I shut down the system and removed all disks except the new SSD. I then re-started and entered the uEFI setup boot menu and disabled all the BIOS boot options to ensure the system would boot in uEFI mode. I also changed the order to put the DVD as the first uEFI boot device. I popped in the WHS 2011 server installation DVD, since I don't have a Win 7 disk, and re-started the system.

I hit the spacebar to boot from DVD when prompted, and the system loaded Windows Files and presented me with screen to Install WHS or Repair. I needed to use the WHS 2011 disk just to gain access to the 64b WinPE, and had no intention of running actual setup or restore applications. At this screen I pressed SHIFT+F10 and opened a command prompt. This is where things get really crazy... Ever heard of DISKPART?

Yeah baby, I've got nothing to lose at this point. DISKPART let's you completely destroy your system disk in a few easy steps... or make a bootable GPT disk, if you're careful. I'm not gonna list all the commands (unless someone wants me to, if anyone's still reading all this blather), but I was able to create a new 100M EFI partition and format it as FAT32 with DISKPART, then exit that and use BCDBoot to copy the system boot image files from the \Windows folder on the SSD. With that done, I ran DISKPART again and created the 128M MSR partition next to the EFI partition (which is why I'd left some unallocated space at the start of the drive - these partitions need to be at particular offsets for the disk to be bootable). With fingers crossed I exited the command prompt, closed the set-up window and the system restarted. While it was booting, I popped the DVD out... drum roll... it booted up perfectly and there was my log-on screen.

As a bit of final clean up, I went back in to Partition Wizard and moved the C: partition adjacent to the MSR partition. I gave the system a few days to run and ensure everything was working properly from the SSD (updates, firewall and MSE were all happy with the set-up, and the Intel SSD Toolbox shows the disk as functioning without error - it even has a max 7.9 performance index for that disk now - it was 6.3 on the 1TB drive). The last step was to make the final move of partitions to the 1TB disk, and re-size the C:\System partition to fill the SSD, which were all taken care of without trouble.

So, to sum up...

Yes, the SSD as a boot device certainly improves system performance. Was it worth it? Probably not. I lost pretty much a week just trying to get this box to boot from a GPT disk. It's very troubling that because of the uEFI system, very few of the tools for data protection work as they're supposed to. The Windows 7 system restore tools don't work, and the bootable DVD simply won't be recognized by the uEFI box (it works fine in other systems I have, so I know it's not the disk).

The worst part is that gem from the WHS 2011 release notes I linked above. I simply cannot backup the Windows 7 client with my WHS 2011 system, which was a big reason for getting WHS in the first place. I think the next step will be to get that VelociRaptor disk, then remove all the existing client drives and see if the box can be re-built using MBR disks to enable WHS 2011 backups. uEFI systems with GPT disks certainly seem the way of the future, so it's very disappointing that most of the data protection tools from Microsoft simply don't work with these systems.

Sorry this post is so long,
-Jeff K.

[bobbyc]

Wow, what a saga, next time I'll wait for the movie.....

So, why can the HP desktop I bought for a customer backup to the whs 2011, it had a 1TB drive also.... I have zero experience with GPT. What should a person look for when buying a new system to make sure they get a computer that can connect to whs? I guess I got lucky that the one I purchased worked with whs 2011.

As you said, that's the purpose for having the server with backups.

[KesterHouse]

You actually read all that!?

I went for the Pavilion H8XT (H8-1240t), which comes with the i7-3770 "Ivy Bridge" processor in their IPMMB-FM "Formosa" motherboard, in an attempt to buy something brand new that would last a few years. I had no idea it was a uEFI system with a GPT disk, and not BIOS with MBR disks. It doesn't say anything about that in the description or specs that I can find anywhere, so no idea how to figure that out before hand. I did talk with HP Support before I bought it, but I was only checking to ensure it didn't come with an Active Power Factor Correction power supply (since those don't play well with stepped sine-wave UPS's). I also asked about their pre-installed 128M SSD (which adds nearly $300 to the cost, which is nuts), since I was considering it if they actually used the Intel 520 series SSD - they're not at liberty to discuss internal component manufactures due to licensing agreements. Gee thanks. A thousand bucks doesn't get you the kind of service it used to, I guess. If I'd known about this GPT mess, I certainly would have asked - it just didn't occur to me.

I'll need to do some research and try to figure out if there's a way to revert the system to BIOS with MBR disks. It's all up and running now (though not backing up, obviously), so I'm gonna give it a week or two to burn in, then I'll pick up that VelociRaptor and fiddle with the partition copy tools again to see what happens if I try and boot from a MBR disk.

-Jeff K.

[Shidoshi]

Your HP should have a license sticker on it, so what I would recommend doing is installing a fresh copy of Windows 7 on your SSD after backing up the SWSETUP folder from the root of C: on your current system -- assuming you have an OEM Windows 7 disc, you can boot from the non-UEFI boot manager, which should configure your drive as MBR, rather than GPT -- which you probably won't need anyway since you're not planning on booting from a drive with a capacity greater than 2.2TBs.

It actually solves two of your issues, with a fresh install using the BIOS bootmgr, it creates MBR partitions which can be backed up by WHS 2011, and the fresh install eliminates the need to remove HP bloatware, thereby creating volume sizes to your liking without having to first de-crapify, then resize and clone...

...and since there's a license sticker on your computer case for the version of Windows 7 it was licensed with, you can install and activate your copy using that license key.

Now, if you don't have an OEM Windows 7 disc available, don't go out and buy a copy of Windows 7 (since it was purchased when you bought the HP, which is reflected in the CoA license sticker), you just need the install media. A retail disc may or may not accept the key during the install, but it should still allow you to install it without a key -- you'll just have to remember to change the key prior to activation after the install.